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The 'oh, who cares' 1st half of May boring ass pattern banter thread


Typhoon Tip

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New observing procedures including the unshielded temp sensor for maximum diurnal range and the 45° snow measuring method. Also, all dews are measured over 12" deep grass with sprinkler systems.

 

Preferably you plant corn around the thermometer to maximize summer ET. 

 

That's where people live... who cares about the dew point on a tarmac????

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I am curious as to what the overnight low was up high on the Tolland Massif? Probably around 45F or so.

 

 

The station closest to him at around 850 feet got down to 35.5F...so he was probably a couple degrees warmer with less rad cooling.

 

But even ORH got down to 37F and they are a horrible rad cooling location.

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Why isn't all data auto generated, minimal human input??

 

A lot of it is..but stuff like snowfall cannot be. Also auto-obs can go haywire and need QC. Without human augmentation, we also cannot detect clouds over 12k feet in the obs. There's certainly other problms as well I'm not mentioning.

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A lot of it is..but stuff like snowfall cannot be. Also auto-obs can go haywire and need QC. Without human augmentation, we also cannot detect clouds over 12k feet in the obs. There's certainly other problms as well I'm not mentioning.

I can tell you right now that the "UP" in metars could be an aviation problem if we can't discern from FZRA or IP. IP and FZRA basically grounds everything. Usually human augmentation helps out with the identification of precip. Dispatchers will just have to call the tower to find out exactly what is falling.

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A lot of it is..but stuff like snowfall cannot be. Also auto-obs can go haywire and need QC. Without human augmentation, we also cannot detect clouds over 12k feet in the obs. There's certainly other problms as well I'm not mentioning.

Actually ASOS is slowly replacing the 12k ceilometers with 25k ones. It's been a slow transition though and I believe it's taking longer to roll out than planned. Probably has something to do with the budget cuts, but that's just a wild guess. I haven't seen the sleet and hail sensors making it to stations yet either. I agree with the premise of your post though.

 

I like the idea of having all of the stations using the same equipment though as it puts all of them on the same playing field. It takes an human biases out of the equation, but like you said, sometimes the instrumentation goes haywire and we need people to QC and promptly replace malfunctioning equipment.

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I can tell you right now that the "UP" in metars could be an aviation problem if we can't discern from FZRA or IP. IP and FZRA basically grounds everything. Usually human augmentation helps out with the identification of precip. Dispatchers will just have to call the tower to find out exactly what is falling.

The PL/GR sensors are out there in the ASOS plans, but I'm not sure what happened. I believe they work with acoustics as the frozen precip "pings" and creates specific frequencies to distinguish them from other forms of precip. FZRA sensors are already out there now.

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The PL/GR sensors are out there in the ASOS plans, but I'm not sure what happened. I believe they work with acoustics as the frozen precip "pings" and creates specific frequencies to distinguish them from other forms of precip. FZRA sensors are already out there now.

 

PL is a killer. Even though it bounces off the wing, it's treated as a serious threat...although I don't completely agree, but that's above me.

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What about PL shuts stuff down? Doesn't seem that dangerous to me. 

 

They are worried about accretion on the wing causing drag. I agree...to me it shouldn't be a big deal, but have to think of safety and what if scenarios. A lot of it is also when it's mixed with FZRA. That obviously is more of an issue, with pellets adhering to the surface.

 

Remember the 2007 Jet Blue disaster at JFK? That was all because of sleet and the forecasts having nothing remotely close to that for that long. That storm changed how airlines operate in wintry weather.

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They are worried about accretion on the wing causing drag. I agree...to me it shouldn't be a big deal, but have to think of safety and what if scenarios. A lot of it is also when it's mixed with FZRA. That obviously is more of an issue, with pellets adhering to the surface.

 

Remember the 2007 Jet Blue disaster at JFK? That was all because of sleet and the forecasts having nothing remotely close to that for that long. That storm changed how airlines operate in wintry weather.

 

Hmmm interesting... seems like snow and sleet would be equally dangerous. 

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Hmmm interesting... seems like snow and sleet would be equally dangerous. 

 

Any combo with PL...forget it. There is a ton of pressure on forecasters..well at least me...when we put out the wording for sleet.  The funny thing is now that airlines get so screwed in fines when the planes are stuck on the tarmac...they just cancel more flights then necessary and still saves them money instead of getting fines.

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Any combo with PL...forget it. There is a ton of pressure on forecasters..well at least me...when we put out the wording for sleet.  The funny thing is now that airlines get so screwed in fines when the planes are stuck on the tarmac...they just cancel more flights then necessary and still saves them money instead of getting fines.

 

Just rip and read the NWS TAFs

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Great info Scott. I would think the technology exists for detection of precip type. Of course you still need QC. On another note I have seen and noted climo errors, wonder how prevalent that is worldwide. Will had one corrected I pointed out this year. Kind of alarming.

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Great info Scott. I would think the technology exists for detection of precip type. Of course you still need QC. On another note I have seen and noted climo errors, wonder how prevalent that is worldwide. Will had one corrected I pointed out this year. Kind of alarming.

 

 

Climo errors probably happen fairly frequently that don't get caught. For temps, hopefully they just even out in the long run so that they don't skew climo...unfortunately for snow, the errors are usually failing to record snow which means it biases snowfall on the low side...I've noticed it typically occurs in smaller events. Occasionally you get snow biased high, like some of the BWI measurements or the Logan Airport fiasco in February 2003 PDII. But I have noticed the omissions tend to be a lot more frequent...admittedly this is anecdotal from my years of observation of climo stats, but I do feel it probably represents reality fairly well.

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HEAVY frost this morning. All those people I saw buying flowers yesterday at Lowes must be pissed. I told one lady buying tomatoes to wait until after the full moon, she said old wives tale. I said no smart farmers tale.

 

Yeah I noticed that a week ago. Tons of people stocking up on flowers. Awfully early still. 

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gnats don't seem to care at all that it's dry..but, at least in my work area, there have been no mosquitoes yet...last week i came across some wetland type areas where the water level had receded enough to leave some clusters of frogs eggs high and dry...and there was only one day about 2weeks ago where i found a few ticks on my pant legs...other than that, seems to not be a bad tick season

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