Friday, January 11, 2008

Baby It's Cold Outside




















Take a look at this! For those who don't read models or only see super models in Sports Illustrated magazine I will decipher this for you. 850 Millibar temperatures are very cold. (The 850 millibar level is part of the low levels of the atmosphere, and in higher elevations is often very near the surface..much like 925 millibars or maybe even higher pressure. Often in the warmer months, the air will mix up to 850 millibars allowing a forecaster to use the 850 chart and the surface charts to get a good idea of what is going on in the boundary layer. One can often forecast the daytime high temperature in the summer months based on the 850 temperature. 850 moisture, 850 winds, areas of warm advection and many other features are important to note on the 850 chart. ) The temperatures here are about -12 Celsius or about about 10 on the Fahrenheit scale, (ouch). This is the end of the day on Monday, so it looks like temperatures will begin to fall late Sunday and throughout the day on Monday.
This last week our new morning anchor Pat Hoffman was introduced to Yukon Cornelius from the animated Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. I'd say Yukon will be making a visit here next week!

2 comments:

Jeff Pruitt said...

As a fellow weather geek I wanted to give everyone a link to my favority weather model. It's a 36-hour model done by the group at the Univ of Illinois and I find it extremely accurate.

Also, I'd like to hear your thought on forecasting in general, specifically anything beyond 48 hours and why you think that's even relevant due to the errors involved.

Welcome to the local blogosphere!

Greg Shoup said...

Jeff,
Thanks for the comments and I don't know if I can match your professorial approach to blogging but you set a good example for me to follow.
The model link you are referring to is a model generated by the National Weather Service. The NAM and WRF or 'WERF' are standards in the weather industry. I like the ECMWF or European model the best for forecasting in the 'medium range'.
I will post something this weekend about medium range forecasting and try to go into a little depth.