Wind Prediction

I have questions for the old hands and weather pros. It starts with a story.

08A recently lost one of our senior aviators, Herb Sloan, 98 years and flying until this past December. He had requested cremation and scattering from the air over the airport, and in accord with his wishes the memorial service was set for Saturday the 16th at 1:30 PM. I was detailed to fly a Cub equipped with a dispensing device.

All week long the weather forecasts indicated a frontal passage late Friday night, with significant winds on Saturday. The forecast was on the money. At flight time we had 20 mph gusting to 30. We got 'er done, but Herb's last low pass was more than a little bumpy.

The weather:

http://www.wunderground.com/history...ional&req_state=AL&req_statename=Alabama&MR=1

All week the surface maps had showed isobars with nice wide spacing, and continued to do so right through Saturday. How did the weather service know it would be windy, and more interesting, how did they know it would be gusty? Assume I had nothing to work with but those same surface maps. Could I have made the same forecast?

http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/dailywxmap/index_20130216.html

DanH said:

Assume I had nothing to work with but those same surface maps. Could I have made the same forecast?

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Not without some sophisticated atmospheric models and a supercomputer.... (that's how they figure where the air is going to flow).

As I understand it, it takes more than the surface measurements to do forecasting. It's been ages since I read "Mariner's Weather Handbook," by Steve and Linda Dashew but that was one of the things I remembered. Heck, that might be the only thing I remember from it.

Dave

Dan,

This doesn't answer your question, but here are a couple of different resources that are very accurate. First two are for surface winds, the last one goes as high as you'll ever go.

http://windmapper.com/

http://www.windfinder.com/

http://weather.cod.edu/analysis/#

On the last link, select "Upper Air Soundings" on the left menu, then select the station closest to you on the map, then, along the top bar, select product menu > sounding text.

Awesome

RonH said:

Dan,

This doesn't answer your question, but here are a couple of different resources that are very accurate. First two are for surface winds, the last one goes as high as you'll ever go.

http://windmapper.com/

http://www.windfinder.com/

http://weather.cod.edu/analysis/#

On the last link, select "Upper Air Soundings" on the left menu, then select the station closest to you on the map, then, along the top bar, select product menu > sounding text.

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Ron, thanks for the links. I learn so much from VAF. It's amazing. Leave it to the Key West balloon guy to know where to find the best winds aloft.

Any time. It's nice to be able to contribute...

DITTO!!

GLPalinkas said:

Ron, thanks for the links. I learn so much from VAF. It's amazing. Leave it to the Key West balloon guy to know where to find the best winds aloft.

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+1 what Gary says!! I love this! Thank you all.

There is a new computer model that the NOAA is running called HRRR "High Resolution Rapid Refresh". It's the most detailed computer model currently available for forecasting all kinds of stuff, including winds, convection, lightning, mesoscale convective complexes etc.
It runs over the CONUS and runs every hour at a 3km grid resolution going out 18 hours. This is much higher resolution than other computer weather models such as the GFS or the ECMWF. I was turned on to it by a retired meteorologist who worked with ATC in the LA Center. They are beginning to use it in their daily planning for routing of air traffic around significant weather etc.

http://rapidrefresh.noaa.gov/HRRR/Welcome.cgi?dsKey=hrrr_dev1

For what you are asking, check out the 10 m winds and 10 m wind gust

Weather Workshops

Dan, if you want to be a real weather guru you should check out
Scott Dennstaedt's weather workshops. Scott is a former NWS forcaster
and is a CFI. He will teach you more about weather forcasting than
you probably want to know. I was really into it for a while and
learned a lot from his workshops. He has some free stuff and some paid
stuff, but the free is worthwhile.

http://avwxworkshops.com/index.php

Alex Caldwell said:

There is a new computer model that the NOAA is running called HRRR "High Resolution Rapid Refresh".

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Thanks Alex.

Doug, take a look at the "3km HRRR Aviation Hourly" link at the upper left...brings up 11 flight-specific graphic reports. Two of them are CONUS-mapped cloud tops and cloud bases on an hourly basis for as much as 9 hours in the future. Very useful for VFR guys with long-legged airplanes.