February 2016: Quiet Warm Weather To End The Month
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Katdaddy
- Global Moderator
- Posts: 2502
- Joined: Thu Feb 04, 2010 8:18 am
- Location: League City, Tx
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Memories of the afternoon before IKE made landfall with the ongoing TS force wind gusts. Peak gusts so far, Hobby 43MPH, Pearland 41MPH, and Galveston 40MPH. A beautiful evening with a rapidly moving cloud deck. Ongoing significant severe weather event continues across the Deep South
Looks like the models and forecasters busted pretty bad with this last system. The heaviest rain was supposed to be across the NE, but it was actually the opposite, mostly to the SW:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/fxc/hgx/ ... _full1.png
It was obvious they didn't have a handle on the situation, reading the NWS Forecast discussion on Monday night when they said "THE FRONTAL BOUNDARY HAS POSSIBLY STARTED DRIFTING NORTHWARD AT MID EVENING"
And this "STILL LOOKS LIKE THE HEAVIEST RAINFALL WILL BE NORTH OF INTERSTATE 10...ALTHOUGH THE RAP13 WAS
FORECASTING A FURTHER SOUTHWARD TRACK FOR THE SURFACE LOW AND ASSOCIATED RAINFALL."
Yeah, that pretty much busted. It was like they were hanging onto hope from older modeling, when it was apparent the warm front really wasn't advancing as forecast, etc.
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/fxc/hgx/ ... _full1.png
It was obvious they didn't have a handle on the situation, reading the NWS Forecast discussion on Monday night when they said "THE FRONTAL BOUNDARY HAS POSSIBLY STARTED DRIFTING NORTHWARD AT MID EVENING"
And this "STILL LOOKS LIKE THE HEAVIEST RAINFALL WILL BE NORTH OF INTERSTATE 10...ALTHOUGH THE RAP13 WAS
FORECASTING A FURTHER SOUTHWARD TRACK FOR THE SURFACE LOW AND ASSOCIATED RAINFALL."
Yeah, that pretty much busted. It was like they were hanging onto hope from older modeling, when it was apparent the warm front really wasn't advancing as forecast, etc.
I concur. With due respect to their good-faith efforts, I don't think local forecasting is at its pinnacle.jasons wrote:Looks like the models and forecasters busted pretty bad with this last system. The heaviest rain was supposed to be across the NE, but it was actually the opposite, mostly to the SW:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/fxc/hgx/ ... _full1.png
It was obvious they didn't have a handle on the situation, reading the NWS Forecast discussion on Monday night when they said "THE FRONTAL BOUNDARY HAS POSSIBLY STARTED DRIFTING NORTHWARD AT MID EVENING"
And this "STILL LOOKS LIKE THE HEAVIEST RAINFALL WILL BE NORTH OF INTERSTATE 10...ALTHOUGH THE RAP13 WAS
FORECASTING A FURTHER SOUTHWARD TRACK FOR THE SURFACE LOW AND ASSOCIATED RAINFALL."
Yeah, that pretty much busted. It was like they were hanging onto hope from older modeling, when it was apparent the warm front really wasn't advancing as forecast, etc.
It could be that the mandate from the top is to simply translate the model consensus output into words and issue them as the intraday discussion. Subjective disagreement with the endorsed model outputs appear to be scorned.
Going forward, I would love to see more experience-based interpretation of model output, and more "gut feel" calls, at least on 3-7 day forecasts. I would bet that they'd be right more often than not, and would add a ton of credibility to their discussions.
If anyone on this board can convey the feeling to the local NWS office that...we'd rather you give us your real thoughts on the forecast and be very wrong some of the time... versus going with the models and being somewhat wrong most of the time, we chose the former (in my opinion). Private forecast companies came into being because government forecasters can't say what they really think (in my opinion).
Going to be a gorgeous and warm weekend coming up for end of February. Time to put the garden in and get outside and enjoy the weather. Forecast is showing rain starts again on Monday and Tuesday.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz