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The Trouble With Forecasts

The Trouble With Forecasts


Author: Jay Titlow
Why? Why? Why do wind forecasts always seem to be wrong? Windsurfers are forced to ask this question too often. In fact, many would argue that the inability to know when, where and how the wind is going blow to be our beloved sport's biggest blemish. We drive to one beach only to find out we should have gone to another. We anger our family, friends and co-workers with prolonged absences during important times only to arrive late and angry ourselves because we got skunked.

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Organic Baby Clothes Philosophy? Yikes, what's a word like this doing in a wind forecasting article? Well, sometimes we forget the National Weather Service's philosophy toward marine forecasts. NWS marine forecasts are intended primarily for public safety and not for windsurfers to select sail sizes. True, the NWS should and does strive for as correct a wind forecast as they can produce, but there's no denying their mission: public safety.

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Punk Baby Clothes There's no better way of illustrating this point than with an example of how the NWS predicted a particular recent wind event: The NWS had small-craft advisories issued for the Virginia Beach, Virginia, area for Monday, February 23, as a developing low-pressure system passed by. Figure 1 depicts the wind speed and direction for that day at Cape Henry on the northern tip of Virginia Beach. Wind direction is depicted in the color bar across the top of the graphs with a legend on the upper right side, while wind speed is depicted by the red line with yellow showing the gust and lull.

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Newborn Baby Clothes If the predicted small-craft advisory lured you into sailing that Monday, and you arrived at the beach between 12:30 and 4:30 p.m., you would have cursed the NWS. The problem: The low moved right over the area, with four hours of no wind while the low passed. Why didn't the NWS react? Despite the temporary light winds, conditions still remained undesirable for boating. Confused seas and impending strong winds ready to return made the NWS forecast advisory correct despite no wind.

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Cheap Baby Clothes In fact, only 100 miles to the north in Ocean City, Maryland, winds never diminished. (See Figure 2.) Small-craft advisory winds the whole day! Moral to the story: With the passage of a low-pressure system, there is too little margin for error, and the NWS had to play it conservatively.

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Alternative Baby Clothes There are other outlets for wind forecasts, but most are derivatives of NWS forecasts. Those that are not NWS forecasts include The Weather Channel's Boat and Beach Report during the summer months and numerous local TV outlets. These forecasts vary in their degree of usefulness, often picking up winds driven by synoptics (large-scale weather systems), but miss smaller-scale phenomena like sea breezes. Finally, one can turn to forecast outlets that do commit themselves to forecasts for sailors.

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Baby Clothes Uk We've established that our primary source for wind forecasts, the NWS, is not really working for us sailors. Can the reason for bad forecasts be more than the NWS not filling our needs? As a wind forecaster, I can emphatically say yes! As a wind forecaster, and windsurfer, I am still amazed at how and why the wind behaves like it does. The field of forecasting meteorology is slowly weaning itself from the crystal ball as forecasting tools improve, but the fact is, wind is driven by many factors, many unknown.

Baby Clothing So what tools do forecasters use for wind forecasting? The easy solution, and one that has been hashed out in many wind articles, is to scan isobar spacing on forecast model output charts. The relationship is simple: The tighter the isobars are packed, the stronger the wind will blow. The problem is, there are several models with isobars on them and they don't always have the same isobars in the same places. Which one do you believe?

Baby Stroller In addition, models all need input data and thrive on getting quality input. What if the data are bad or missing? Inaccurate or missing input data are probably the main source of poor model performance. In fact, many West Coast meteorologists would state that models are always missing input data! Let me explain: Since weather systems travel from west to east in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere, meteorologists on the West Coast need to know what's going on upstream in the Pacific Ocean, where virtually NO data are collected. Thus, models often output very poor predictions because of little input in important areas. How can the model predict the future when it doesn't know the present?

Infant Clothing But forecasters' woes are far greater than interpreting model output. If you sail San Francisco Bay, the Gorge or many other windsurfing hot spots around the country, you know it takes more than looking at isobar spacing to predict strong winds. Some of the best windsurfing days in the Columbia Gorge don't have an isobar within hundreds of miles. A large high-pressure system centered over southern Oregon can mean 4.2 weather.

Infant Clothes The message is anything but simple: Forecasting winds means more than knowing where high- and low-pressure systems are and where they will go. Besides pressure gradient, winds are driven by many features including precipitation, sunshine/cloud cover, land/water temperature differences, local geography and even tides! Predicting when, where and how strong winds will blow means knowing where clouds are, where they will form and where they will go. It means knowing where radar echoes are, where they will form and where they will go. It means knowing how strong the winds are blowing aloft and whether they will mix down to the surface. It means knowing water temperatures and predicted high temperatures for the day. And to add insult to injury, all of these factors are interrelated.

Free Baby Products When it rains, the air temperature cools. When the sun comes out, air temperatures rise. So prediction of winds means a complete integration of model interpretation and other related parameters like temperature, precipitation and cloudiness. Then a constant vigil is needed to monitor radar, satellite, and observed wind fields - no small task!

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Graco Baby Products Nature has thrown down the gauntlet. She intends to make it difficult for anybody to forecast wind. Nonetheless, the demand is there and there are fools like myself who enjoy the self-inflicted pain that comes with wind forecasting. Seriously, the news is not all doom and gloom for meteorologists who forecast winds. The job is being made easier by some recent advancements in the field of meteorology. What are these advancements, and how are they getting better?

Top Baby Strollers Forecast models: There are more models than there have been in the past, which allows for comparison. As stated, the models do not always produce an accurate predicted wind field, so it's advantageous to be able to digest several model outputs to come up with the best forecast. In addition, forecast confidence goes up when all models call for wind (which unfortunately does not happen enough). Models have better temporal resolution.

Discount Baby Strollers For example, models now output predicted winds every six hours instead of every 12. Models have better spatial resolution. One of the NWS' main forecasting models is now run with 32-kilometer resolution, down from 48. Why is this important? Smaller bodies of water like the Pamlico Sound, Chesapeake Bay and San Francisco Bay are now seen as water and not land by the model. The model can now predict a sea breeze! Finally, the models are smarter. Model physics have improved with greater understanding of the meteorological processes, and faster computers allow for the physics to run in a reasonable time.

Baby Phat Clothing Radar: Doppler radar can often detect sea breezes and are very good at seeing winds in storms. When these radar are in what is called clear-air mode, they are so sensitive to haze and salt air that they can detect when it has been pushed inland, thus detecting a sea breeze.

Natural Baby Products Mesonets: As Wind Hot Line meteorologist, my job is made possible by the dozens of wind stations that monitor winds along the coast in real time. They allow me to pick up sea breezes not seen at the NWS observing sites, which are usually located at the nearest airport. They also allow for correlation between cloud cover and radar to wind fields.

New Baby Products Satellites: This advancement is twofold. First, visible satellite allows for excellent depiction of cloud cover and thus coastal wind features. Also, meteorologists on the West Coast rely heavily on satellite imagery over the data-sparse Pacific Ocean to tell them when and where the next system will be affecting the coast. Second, satellites themselves are starting to be able to directly measure winds. Currently, our only gauge of ocean winds comes from ship reports, so depicting wind fields in incredible detail will be a huge step forward. Expect more of these types of instruments in the future.

Organic Cotton Baby Clothes What is the downside to all the advancements that have come along? Information overload! These tools have all become a vital part of the job of wind forecasting, but it takes a constant vigil to stay on top of the ever-changing conditions. So the theme here is that even though forecasting tools are getting better, the science requires manpower that most forecasting operations do not have.

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Best Baby Products Despite the fact that predicting winds is near-impossible at times, the tools for forecasting are out there and getting better. The key is not many people have the luxury of being able to work full time with the tools for predicting winds. This takes us to the last forecast failure: forecast delivery. Meteorologists often cry foul when it comes to forecast delivery. Many forecasts prepared by meteorologists do contain the information we are craving, but they are delivered by someone who has little clue about the weather.

Wholesale Baby Clothes Morning DJs, beautiful women with nice figures and Willard Scott are all guilty of butchering legitimate weather forecasts. They fail in two ways. First, most who deliver weather forecasts are not in tune with real-time conditions and do not know when to amend forecasts on the fly. Second, there is an inherent desire to gloss over the all-important portion of the forecast that deals with winds. The general public wants to know if it's going to snow or rain, not, winds south shifting southeast after 3 p.m. at 13 to 16 knots.

Baby Girl Clothing The answer here is to find an outlet committed to wind forecasting or to try to read between the lines on the mainstream forecast outlets. For example, if local TV personality Miss New Jersey says temperatures will drop during afternoon hours when we know that temperatures usually are warm, it must mean the cold front has passed and the northwest winds will pick up.

Baby Trend Stroller Here's another example: If The Weather Channel local forecast calls for breezy conditions in San Francisco, but the local observations show fog at Oakland, San Francisco AND San Jose at 3 p.m., it's time to think about another afternoon activity besides windsurfing.

Discount Baby Clothes Another involves listening to successive NWS marine forecasts. The actual wind-speed predictions are not my primary focus. What is important is whether the forecast has changed. For example, if the 8 p.m. forecast calls for southwest 20 to 25 knots for the following day, time to raise a wind alert flag. Before heading out for a day of sailing, listen to the latest forecast. If the forecast now calls for 10 to 15 knots, it may be worth calling off the trip. The key here is that the downward forecast trend is often a sign of a disappointing day ahead.

Baby Travel System Extracting these extra nuggets when the forecasters and media are not telling us exactly what we want can make the difference between a shred and a skunk.

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