Tag: GFS

The 360 Hour From Now Hurricane That Won’t Happen

Here’s the good news. 360 hours out, especially in the summer, we have almost no skill at all!

Have you seen the 360 hour forecast from the 18z GFS? Don’t worry. I looked for you!

The GFS (Global Forecast System) is a dynamic atmospheric computer model. It’s one tool in forecasting the weather.

The +360h iteration (valid August 25, 2011 at 1:00 PM) puts some sort of hurricanish storm just south of Long Island. Ominous is a good word to describe what the map portrays.

Here’s the good news. 360 hours out, especially in the summer, we have almost no skill at all! Saying its late August is probably a more convincing argument for a nearby hurricane than anything the GFS outputs.

Every time I see one of these systems (nearly guaranteed not to be on the next model run) I ask myself the same thing: Why even bother going out that far?

I don’t think there’s a good answer.

Forecast: Long Duration Gloom

Flowers and plants will grow. We’ll be a little less happy. No, actually we’ll be downright depressed.

Part of my morning ritual is looking at weather data so I can get up to speed. There’s a lot of green on this chart. I don’t like what I see!

First the good news. During the warm season it’s unusual to have all-day rain. Unfortunately it’s not uncommon to have long duration gloom.

The image at the top of this entry is a screencap from BUFKIT–the Swiss Army Knife of weather. The weather model is the GFS, our go-to model when looking out a week. BUFKIT is read right-to-left, so today is on the far right side and the upcoming week spreads out to the left.

Those vertical bars of green represent rain. At the moment each six hour block through Saturday has at least a tiny bit of rain.

Flowers and plants will grow. We’ll be a little less happy. No, actually we’ll be downright depressed.