Evo

Hi Mark It's still very much in the alpha stage at the moment. The daemon is pretty much totally functional, but still a bit shakey and tends to fall over now and again. I'm fixing it up as I go. Within a couple of weeks I should have sufficient data for the output to make sense. Anyway, I am getting the point data from here: http://wxweb.meteostar.com/sample/ If you enter an ICAO airfield code, it will give you the point data. I'm downloading the METARS from lfv.se because the weather.noaa.gov ones are a bit slow to update. The daemon downloads the pages at set times and then parses them to extract the data. In terms of raw data, we have 16 rows (4 rows per ICAO site) of METAR data a day and up to* 96 rows (6 rows per ICAO site per run) of GFS data a day - it's not that much data to be honest. It's currently going into an access db but I also have MySQL and SQL Servers available to me to use. * The meteostar site seems to update erratically, sometimes missing runs. Once I have a proper dataset built up, I'll send you a copy and you can do your statistical magic on it. If you're interested in the code then at some point I can send this over as well. It needs a lot of tidying up first though. One last thought - ideally the data would come from the GRIB output but this is just too complicated for me to attempt at the moment. Not only that, the GRIB files aren't exactly small! Hi John To be honest the program wouldn't do a lot for you, it needs to be running on a server 24x7 and have permanent internet access. You are quite welcome to share the data it creates though, in whatever format is best for you. Your input is obviously valued so please feel free to let me know what you think!

Hm try again, the first post got killed by a crashing Internet Explorer Hi John, I am currently working on a program that will download point data from the GFS runs for a number of UK locations automatically at regular intervals at distances from T24 through to T168. It will also download the relevant METAR for the times of the predictions and present the result in a self-updating image like this: [ignore the actual figures here, it's mostly dummy data] Once a sufficient data set has built up it should be possible to do some calculations to establish how accurate the GFS is at various ranges and for various locations. Quite exactly what, how, why and when I'm not sure but it should be something else interesting to throw into the pot. Edit: P.S. The current locations are Bournemouth, Heathrow, Manchester and Glasgow. These will probably change at some point to give a good geographic spread.

Light snow in Bournemouth now, dusting on cars and roofs overnight - not on ground.

No problem chaps, glad to help

In view of the WZ problems tonight, here are some alternate pages which use different WZ links. These are working OK. T+96 500s T+120 500s T+144 500s T+96 850s T+120 850s T+144 850s

Please could you provide a link showing this definition?

Just a point that's been niggling me JS, I've never heard of the the term beaurificated. Do you mean bifurcated?

Hi TWS I've done the other times and added the other oddball models in - it's obviously up to you which ones you use! Here are the links: T+96 500s T+120 500s T+144 500s T+96 850s T+120 850s T+144 850s Only Nogaps, GFS, JMA & GEM have 850s on Wetterzentrale, with the GEM 850s only going out to T+120. If you can, save the above pages to your hard drive by using the File -> Save As menu item in your browser, as they may not stay on the above links forever. If you save them to your desktop, you'll have ready made shortcuts. Hope this helps! Oh and one last thing, try to check the model shown is correct (at the bottom of the image) as once or twice the radio button on the right has said one thing but the Nogaps has been displayed! I think this only happens when using the refresh button. The image goes back to Nogaps but the radio button on the right will stay on whatever it was before you press refresh.

TWS I don't know if this will be of any use to you. I fixed it up from an old semi-broken page I found on the Internet. This is for T+96 but if it's useful I can do other timebases too. I think they will all line up timewise with 12z data just before the 18z GFS comes out? T96 Comparison Sometimes the fader breaks. Just hit the refresh button to fix. Best viewed at 1024x768 screen resolution or greater. Let me know...

Cheers Paul. I thought the satellite might be tricky as most of the images are skewed to some extent, and then there's the scaling... What I was thinking of for the compass was to be able to click and drag to make a line and get a distance and bearing reading. What you have in planning sounds better anyway. Thanks again

I'm guessing this is a known issue but I'll prattle away anyway On the radar, there seems to be issues with the caching of the images. If you view the radar one day and then view it again the next day, you'll sometimes get the current image and you'll sometimes get the cached image from the day before. If you press the refresh button the latest image will show but then when the page auto-refreshes you get the old cached image again. Also if you try to animate you'll get the cached image, even if you've used the refresh button. Can you send an "content-expires" tag with the page or do something to stop this? P.S. This has happened on several machines, but they are all XP with IE6 so it could be a browser thing... P.P.S. Features that would be nice for the next version (IMO) * Adjustable animation speed, ping-pong option * Satellite overlay option * A drag-able tape measure and compass rose so you can measure rate and direction of a feature (I know what I mean but does this make sense?!?) There are other ideas I've thought of in the past but my mind has gone blank now I've tried to write them down

6.2 for me. An up and down month I reckon with a bit of everything.

15 minute very heavy snow shower. Eventually began to settle but thawed within 5 minutes of the sun coming out again. (Bournemouth Seaside)

Brief heavy snow shower on Bournemouth coast. Lasted about 10 minutes, no settling.

Continuous fine snow in Bournemouth now. Quite heavy really given the size of the grains. 020/8knts T2, D -2, Overcast at 4,500ft

Hey Beth At the top of this section (Help, support and feedback) there is a guide on how to post pictures. Basically, at the bottom of the post page, there is a "File Attachments" section. Click browse, browse and select the file, click Add Attachment, then "Add into post".

I've often wondered about the magnitude of work that goes into producing a fax chart from the raw model output. One day it would be really nice if I had sufficient understanding, software and time to be able to do that from the GFS output

Yahoo News Article I'm guessing they haven't seen this: Precip Type Chart Brrrrrrr

I agree Ian. I posted somewhere earlier that it looked to me that because the UKMO weren't sure of the specifics of the LPs position, they just looked up in the stats book which areas are most often affected by a northerly. The chart also looks more like a snow chance chart than a chance of disruption chart!

I'll stick my neck out here and have a go. Warning: the information contained within may be total bullplop. A bit of background. The Polar Front Jet or PFJ circulates the globe from West to East. During the summer it moves North and during the winter it sinks South. If the jet circulates in a very flat pattern with little north and southwards variation it is said to be zonal. When the jet is zonal, the weather of countries near the jet will be dominated by westerly winds. In our case, this means generally mild and wet weather coming in off the Atlantic. Places north of the PFJ will be in cold air and placed South of the PFJ will be mild. If the jet is zonal, it will generally be to the North of us, leaving us with mild, wet weather. The jet is never perfectly flat though and it will have kinks in it which are called long waves (long waves are also called Rossby Waves). If these waves amplify sufficiently you enter a meridional flow where cold air flows south from the Arctic and warm air flows north. This happens side by side with Southerly winds pushing the warm air North and Northerly winds flooding cold air South. I think what Steve was referring to with a 4 wave pattern is that there are four Rossby waves in the PFJ, which produces a stable jet flow - potentially for quite a while, and this implies that our current synoptics stay locked in because the jet doesn't flatten and break through the Mid-Atlantic block. That's my understanding anyway, I'm sure someone more knowlegable can correct me if it's all wrong!

If nobody else will make use of this area I will B) How about this for a scattered ensemble? The green member crashes through the x axis at the end! Edmonton Ensemble from WeatherOnline

That's the problem with decorating isn't it. After a while its so tempting to just cut corners and get it done (LOL I'm not implying you did, though I have in the past...) Hope you enjoyed the show!

Try here (and here)

What you are looking for is forensic meteorology. Try here DMOZ List or Google that term. You can also try WeatherOnline. Click on "History"

A [totally late] congratulations on the bambino Roo, does she have a Net-Weather login yet? (well kids seem to grasp technology so young these days )