February 23, 2009

Coming in faster

The band of precipitation is moving through now...and should be through by dinner time for most of the lowlands. About 3-6h faster than the model's indicated yesterday. Such timing errors are not unusual, unfortunately. Lack of detailed observations offshore is a major contributor to these errors. Another reason why we need a coastal radar.

10 comments:

  1. I just read the NWS forcast....sounds like it's going to be blustery for the next week? And they mentioned that a system coming in next weekend was "too far out" to determine if it would be a good wind or just blustery, but they said it was a bit late in the season for it to more than just blustery.....but what are the chances that system could be a big wind maker? We didn't get much wind this year.....I miss it!

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  2. Looks very windy on the Oregon coast...not much action for us...cliff

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  3. Cliff

    You mentioned that the rain arrived 3 to 6 hours earlier than predicted. Do you know what might have caused that? Was it the low was more or less intense than was anticipated, the winds shifted or were of a different intensity than originally thought? I'm just taking stabs in the dark there.
    I work in the wireless industry and rely on predictions showing how far a cell site might cover and how strong the coverage will be from our sites. We "tune" our own models to make them more closely represent what is really out there. The major problem is our morphologies are way out of whack in terms of their heights and how much they can degrade an RF signal. I guess I'm just wondering if say the models used for weather prediction don't have accurate/detailed data for determining our weather? What are your feeling on this? Do you wish they were better? I can tell you in my line of work our morphology data could be MUCH better.

    Thanks!

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  4. good comments, Cliff, on KIRO TV this evening! Excellent case put forward for Washington coast radar. Thanks.

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  5. Every time we're wrong, it's the coastal radar's fault, huh?

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  6. Had a good little band of rain come through earlier this evening that put down 0.25" in my rain gauge. Before that though, I had early morning sunshine and then turned cloudy by afternoon time.

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  7. Dear Senators & Representatives:

    We NEED a Coastal Radar!!

    Thank you,

    Koncerned Kayaker

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  8. From what was seen on the show, coastal radar really would go along ways and helping see the incoming storms that the radar can`t see cause of the Olympics. And hear that it`ll cost between 4mil and 10mil is sure going to take a lot of funding to make that happen.

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  9. Honestly, I don't care if the rain today was forecast to come between 1-5pm as it did, or between 5-10pm as it may have been expected to. Either way, the rain's going to come. It's not going to be stopped. It's nice to be surprised about what it's doing when I step outside, whether it's raining or cloudy or sunny or whatever. It would be way too boring if we knew what was going to happen and exactly when. Just my opinion, of course.

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  10. That is why we have forecast and Meteorologist -like Cliff- to give us an idea of what the days weather will be for a certain time frame so that we can plan accordingly and also know what to dress for(i.e...t-shirt/shorts, jacket gloves, ect). :o)

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