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Ben Sainsbury

Pro Forecaster / Meteorologist
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Posts posted by Ben Sainsbury

  1. 3 minutes ago, CoxR said:

    does anybody have a rough estimate as to what a 43 C max would be in reality when accounting for the GFS' biases?

    This is one of the rare situations CoxR where since we have never experienced this here in the UK in real world that we wouldn't know what temperature this would correspond to in reality.

    Just looking closer at this GFS 6z run, the *28C* 850hPa isotherm just about skims Kent, with 27C more widely. Utterly remarkable.

    499282926_28Cat850hPa.thumb.png.e1755598cc3a10592e1e2c89eda0ec43.png

    • Like 3
  2. 1 hour ago, Harry said:

    @The Tall Weatherman you need to appreciate models will calculate CAPE differently and generate different amounts. Dan who produced today’s forecast on Convective Weather is a bona fide meteorologist who, I think I’m right in saying, undertook his thesis on CAPE - he knows what he’s talking about

    You're correct there! Good to see Dan back doing the forecasts, not that Chris was bad at all! Also NMM is known to overdo CAPE amounts, most other models are more on the conservative side in line with Dan's forecast.

  3. 38 minutes ago, lottiekent said:

    Thanks Paul

    I’m guessing we want low cloud base and high cloud tops?

    To add on from Paul, in basic terms higher cloud tops would be indicative of a stronger updraft - so possibly more instability. Also, higher cloud tops might indicate a greater risk of hail/lightning but that is also dependent on a number of other factors. For low cloud base, this can help determine whether thunderstorms are likely to be surface based or elevated. In technical terms, low cloud bases can support funnel cloud/tornadic development, but that is also assuming other conditions are favourable.

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  4. Several people screaming 'Kent Clipper' and yet again no evidence of a Kent Clipper! This year has been a remarkable year so far for elevated thunderstorms coming up from the south. I'd imagine large CAPE being released now at the boundary between the high Theta-W airmass and the trough/front moving down from the north. Judging by the radar, quick upscale into an MCS looks quite likely atm as it clears ENE.

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  5. 1 hour ago, James1979 said:

    Altocumulus castellanus suddenly popping up everywhere here but based on the latest in this thread I'm presuming it means precisely nothing in terms of possible storms. Seems the way now - hot spell swept away by nothing- what happened to the old heat and stormy breakdowns? 

    No storms today... some mid-level instability however the atmosphere is very dry and nothing to trigger significant convection so a bit of AcCas but that's about it. Tomorrow, looks mostly confined to the SE for anything decent, though there's still an awful lot of uncertainty regarding where storms will initiate etc. Possibly some embedded thunder within the rain band over western/central areas tomorrow.

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  6. 12 minutes ago, Thundershine said:

    Interesting. I don't see any CAPE on the GFS at least, don't thunderstorms require instability to occur? 

    GFS only shows surface-based CAPE, that'll be why! Unfortunately, surface-based storms in this environment are often more exciting as they can become severe, however that isn't looking as likely as it was a few days ago. Looking at a Skew-T, what is more likely is if storms can initiate from 800hPa (elevated thunderstorms) then I would expect large CAPE release with very frequent lightning, but even this remains to be seen yet.

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  7. 6 minutes ago, Earthshine said:

    Not really, models are never going to give exact temperatures especially in an extreme situations like this.  You would have to know the exact state of the atmosphere which of course we can't with current observation capabilities.  If we see 32°C for example that doesn't mean the model failed, it's just that the pattern was on such a knife edge that even a 10° change in wind direction (for example) could mean the difference between 32° and 36°C

    You're not wrong and I do agree to some extent, but surely this logic should be applied to all of the models because they all begin their runs with the same observational data so should have somewhat similar errors (obviously I know the model physics differ slightly). But as I said in my previous comment, the UKV having the highest resolution means it should still perform slightly better regarding the peak max temps for this Friday (whether that be 32C or 36C), regardless of whether one of the variables is slightly off or not. Maybe saying it would be a 'disaster' is a bit far, but this brief hot blast will definitely give us a good insight into how we should perceive the models (& UKV in particular) going forward when we are expecting extreme heat.

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  8. 4 minutes ago, mb018538 said:

    Still looks a bit extreme compared to everything else. I reckon 32 or maybe 33c looks the best bet. 35-36c would be insane!

    Definitely right on the upper end of the models, ARPEGE reaches 33C maybe 34C, GFS not far off now either. Logically, the UKV is by far the highest resolution model we have, so in theory it should be best in forecasting min/max temperatures. The fact that the UKV has consistently been forecasting 34-36C too, to me assuming it produces the same values the day before then if we don't see temperatures of 34-36C then I think it will be a bit of a disaster from the UKV tbh.

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