Long range weather modeling.

[puma]

Anyone have any good links for > 10 day forecasts?

I've got a trip to Whistler scheduled second week of Feb. This bloody high pressure pattern has me a tad worried. I want to keep believing that it's good to get it out of it's system now, but I'm showing 10 days as Sunny and clear in Whistler into the first part of Feb...

I know, any forecast beyond tomorrow is suspect...but I'm getting excited for the trip, and can't help but try to look...

[Rontele]

This won't help your forecasting for Canukistan, but these are the best tools for medium range U.S. forecasting

[mrryde]

http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/mode....php?model=gfs

[extreeski]

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/

NOAA Climate Prediction Center

[Bawheed]

I like this

"The software package handles data broadcast directly by the National Weather Service, reads in and files the data, decodes and parses the information and finally visualizes the data in a variety of formats. The primary audience for the package are meteorologists but is also developed to provide non-meteorologists the ability to view the data with varying degrees of complexity."

Sea Level Pressure and Precipitation, and the 850mb plots are what you need to look at.

[Tectonically_Neglected]

@ the euros:

Looking for high def doppler radar images to scope where most snow is falling, general cloud cover radar gifs and any snow (forecast) sites that are somewhat believeable for the alps Austria and Switz in general (au contraire to showforecast, who always seems the optimist till about 24 - 48 hours till dumpage and then they screw back their predictions by 70% )

Anyone got some goodies?

[Ripzalot]

@ the euros:

Looking for high def doppler radar images to scope where most snow is falling, general cloud cover radar gifs and any snow (forecast) sites that are somewhat believeable for the alps Austria and Switz in general (au contraire to showforecast, who always seems the optimist till about 24 - 48 hours till dumpage and then they screw back their predictions by 70% )

Anyone got some goodies?

this is a decent one for switz, you can enter a past date/time and replay the images for that period:
http://www.landi.ch/deu/0804_niederschlagsradar.asp

however, it's not nearly as accurate as this one, which lacks the past replay feature. this one actually distinguishes between snow and rain.
http://www2.sfdrs.ch/sfmeteo/wetter_...ederschlag.php

i have notice at times in comparing the two above that the landi radar may show clear over an area, while checking the sfdrs radar shows snow. and on-the-ground observations concur with the sfdrs one.

and finally, for the big view, there is this one for all of europe. useful to see what is approaching.
http://www.meteox.com/h.aspx?r=holid...soort=loop1uur


in snow-forecast's defense, i don't think many people really understand what they do. they don't actually create the forecasts. they simply take the 6 day forecast data from the NWS (US national weather service) and map it to elevation maps. so if the NWS is wrong, snow-forecast is wrong. that's why it's not practical to even suggest that what shows on the 6th day might actually fall. i think of it this way:

3-6 days - shows that something is coming (or not)
3 day - firms up where it is likely to fall
1 day - firms up how much is likely to fall

here's a US military weather forecast for euro aviation weather. if you follow and compare this to snow-forecast, you will find that they will (generally) agree. (snow-forecast will lag by several hours since they have to generate their models from the same source data).
http://131.54.120.150/asp/syn00120_l...&loc=GifImages


all these links are on my blog below....

[Tectonically_Neglected]

Cheers man!

[Core Shot]

makes me wanna cry (or at least be in Alaska with ONS)

[Rontele]

makes me wanna cry (or at least be in Alaska with ONS)

we are looking at widespread 50% of usual snowpack for many places west of the continental divide.

[RootSkier]

Baby Jeebus is crying in his beer.

[garuda]

Global warming?

[mrkristofo]

Before you try reading the GFS or GFSx models, have a look here:

http://www.theweatherprediction.com/models/

GFS/MRF are more or less the same as of right now.

I use unisys because it's easy to load up the 4-panel plots and look 10-days out, but you should understand the massive amount of disagreement that even the same model has with itself that far out, let alone between different models. GFS, as the name implies, is a Global Forecasting Model, therefore it is pretty low-resolution (READ: you're not going to see the effects of snow on the mountains like you would in the NAM, RUC2, etc). But, it's nice for getting an idea if some big fucker is gonna come in, or seeing just how long this damn ridge will be set up.

On a side note, I'm working on a website that will pull all these relevant images from 3 different models, Vis/IR/WV sat loops, national radar mosaics, soundings for the last 72 hours, digital forecasts, warnings/hazards, webcams, etc. I'll have variations for the Wasatch, Tahoe, and Jackson. Pretty much for my own reference, but I suppose you guys would like it too, so I'll let you know when it's done. With the weather as exciting as it is, I'm not in too much of a hurry to finish it.