Friday, January 04, 2008

We Don't Always Agree

There have been times when people ask me why our forecast, The Weather Channel's forecast, other TV stations, and/or The National Weather Service's forecast do not match. I simply explain that many of us have different forecast techniques, model favorites, and sleep patterns (just kidding... kind of.)

This weekend's forecast between the NWS (Memphis) and myself is a little different. They have "Rain Likely" for tomorrow (Saturday) and a 70% chance. I am going with a 30-40% chance. It's not a huge difference, but enough for people to notice. I just don't think we'll see that much rain. Most of the stuff on radar right now is not reaching the ground and that is associated with a few upper-level disturbances that we thought would bring the rain chance Sat AM. I'm not sure what other TV stations or TWC had in their forecast....

EDIT: Let me note: "Most" of the time, our forecasts are similar. When we differ... somtimes their forecast verifies and sometimes ours does. It's the nature of the business.

The above image is BUFKIT and I have plotted the 00Z NAM model. It shows what we have been mentioning all week. Cloudy, with mild temperatures and a chance for some isolated showers. The better rain chances will hold off until Tuesday. In the overview window, I have these parameters plotted:

Temperature- Red line
CAPE- Lower line
Clouds
Accumulated Precipitation- Green bars
Elevated CAPE over 1000- none shown

I think we'll see some showers in the AM hours, but they should not last long and should be very light. They will also not be that widespread.

We'll see !
Ryan

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You hit it on the head Ryan!!!! Good job!