Since we have a slow stretch of weather, I am going to explain to everyone how I formulate a forecast. In situations like the past couple days, coming up with a forecast is quite easy. There is not much going on and I can usually have it finalized in about 20 minutes. However, When we get into an active weather pattern I will put hours into putting out a forecast for a storm that is imminent. I always put hours into a long term trend forecast. I look at every model that I have access to. I will then come up with a forecast that seems logical to me. I will then Read all the local area forecast discussions from the NWS. I will read the Chicago office, The two offices in Iowa, the two offices in Wisconsin, the two offices in Indiana, the Lincoln ILL office, and the three in Michigan. I want to see what other offices are thinking. Are they verifying what my thoughts are? What is their confidence level in their forecast? How is their collaboration. More time than not their ideas are very similar to my line of thinking. If I am somewhere out in left field, I want to see why my thoughts are different. If their logic makes sense I will tweak or amend my forecast. Sometimes they are just not very confident in what is going to happen. In those cases I run with my forecast. After reading the discussions I will then go back and re-examine the models, and I will then issue a forecast. For long term trends I will go onto a couple sites to confirm my thinking. I will reference these sites, but ultimately when I go out two to three weeks that is me going out on a limb and it can get quite dicey sometimes. I look at all the models and teleconnections to base a forecast for the long term. Many times there are many disagreements so you need to know model biases and such to come up with a forecast beyond day 7. That comes with experience of studying models and climate patterns. If there is no logical trend or signals, I do not post a long term prediction. I am not into guessing. I post of long term pattern prediction if I am quite certain my trend or pattern will verify. Anyway there is more into how I formulate my forecasts, but what I explained above pretty much summarizes what I do to come up with a forecast. Have a great day and I will be monitoring trends and patterns and probably will put something out in detail for the coming two weeks in the next day or two.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 14:14:57 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015