The purpose of a Rube Goldberg machine is to take the simplest of tasks and make the process so elaborate and grotesquely complicated, it is outright comical. It’s meant to be a joke.

Though my sense of humor can be warped at times, there is nothing funny when it comes to dispersion modeling. At times, the process does feel like a sadistic Rube Goldberg concoction. Let me give you an example: finding and downloading meteorological data (surface, ASOS, and upper air). It can feel like a million complicated steps for such a straightforward task. We have shortened it to a simple few. Watch the short video below to see what I mean.