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Fall Banter & General Discussion/Observations


CapturedNature

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1 hour ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

I’d like to play that course. 

I have free access to it... and still have never played it. Actually, never played golf period! But yes, I have no regrets having moved up here. We thought it would get lonely/too quiet but it's just perfect in my book. Easy enough access to Boston for the 1-2 days a week I need to be there for work, and I get to spend the rest of the week in this incredible scenery. 

On that note, my Vacation Rentals business is really booming, we now have 10 units at Bretton Woods. I'm happy to give a discount to anyone who's looking to come up - our website is www.brettonwoodsrentals.com

 

 

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The scene early this afternoon at 4kft....the rime on the trees made it through the entire day despite temps rising into the mid-30s.  But that's the beauty of the east side where Stowe's operation resides...great preservation because the only real direct sunlight is seen in the morning hours, which is the coldest part of the day.  The shadows grow even 1pm on the high east side.  In late November and December, the sun can actually "set" on the east side ski trails at like 11am-12pm, with shadows for the rest of the day.  The west slope gets basked in afternoon sunlight during the warmest part of the day.

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20 hours ago, alex said:

I have free access to it... and still have never played it. Actually, never played golf period! But yes, I have no regrets having moved up here. We thought it would get lonely/too quiet but it's just perfect in my book. Easy enough access to Boston for the 1-2 days a week I need to be there for work, and I get to spend the rest of the week in this incredible scenery. 

On that note, my Vacation Rentals business is really booming, we now have 10 units at Bretton Woods. I'm happy to give a discount to anyone who's looking to come up - our website is www.brettonwoodsrentals.com

 

 

Alex, was your photo from a drone? Amazing, none the less. I've always thought the presidentials up your way has the best mountain views in all of New England. Also, when you travel south to Boston for work, do you take 93 or 16?

My view in Thornton isn't anywhere near yours, but I settled on convenience. 90 minutes door to door to my house in Lowell. I also still can't believe I paid $9k for a lot with this view.

20171008_152207_resized-sm.jpg

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15 hours ago, alex said:

Currently 33.6 with a forecasted low of 37. I think the forecast is going to bust. 

EDIT: It's 43F 200 ft higher at the Presidential condos. Amazing localized difference from valley bottom and higher elevations. 

So I based this off your location for your PWS, but using the P&C the map will show you your grid box that it is averaging to come up with the wording. You are a great example of how comically bad our forecasts can be sometimes. Your grid box covers every elevation from the top of Mount Oscar (over 2700 feet) to the valley floor (around 1500 feet). That's averaging at least 1200 feet of vertical. So apologies, your forecast will never be accurate until we get smaller grid spacing. :cry:

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3 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

So I based this off your location for your PWS, but using the P&C the map will show you your grid box that it is averaging to come up with the wording. You are a great example of how comically bad our forecasts can be sometimes. Your grid box covers every elevation from the top of Mount Oscar (over 2700 feet) to the valley floor (around 1500 feet). That's averaging at least 1200 feet of vertical. So apologies, your forecast will never be accurate until we get smaller grid spacing. :cry:

More likely you'll be starting to throw out 45 day forecasts

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Just now, mreaves said:

More likely you'll be starting to throw out 45 day forecasts

We still struggle with day 7...:cry:

Seriously though, a forecast just did a back of the envelope study of the Thursday night widespread frost/freeze. He looked at every shift from day 7 on and the multi-model consensus guidance on those shifts (typical starting point for the forecast). 

Needless to say, despite strong model support for sprawling high pressure, the consensus blend was on average about 10 degrees off at day 7. We made no adjustments until about Tuesday (hearty pat on the back for myself with my forecast update), after which we went back to a blend that produced worse forecasts until verification time. 

This was done at every MOS point in our forecast area, so we're talking true point forecasts and not averages. But it highlights not only model performance issues, but forecaster performance issues. I was explicit in why I changed the forecast at day 3/4 range, but why didn't later shifts continue the changes? 

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27 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

It does show a major flaw of the P&C forecast though. I think it gives a sense of false precision. Anyone can click on their house and get a forecast, but it isn't really the forecast for their house. It's probably even closer to their town than their neighborhood. 

Yeah in this area it's pretty funny how varied and nuanced the weather can be.  I'll just click around until I get the average elevation around 800ft even if the grid box isn't over my house.  

 

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1 minute ago, powderfreak said:

Yeah in this area it's pretty funny how varied and nuanced the weather can be.  I'll just click around until I get the average elevation around 800ft even if the grid box isn't over my house.  

 

In Alex's case the average grid point is 1700 feet (he is just below 1600) so it's not wildly off. That probably points more towards a modeling issue. Now our grid points are that small (2.5x2.5 km), but the models are even larger (depending on the source). So in order to get that level of detail in the forecast we would have to adjust each individual grid point.

We can do that, but it is time consuming. We had a wildfire at 2500 feet elevation last week and ran our spot forecast based off our grids. It was way off at hour 0 (they provide the observation at the site). So we dropped a lat/lon pair into the grids and manually adjusted it to match.

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46 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

It does show a major flaw of the P&C forecast though. I think it gives a sense of false precision. Anyone can click on their house and get a forecast, but it isn't really the forecast for their house. It's probably even closer to their town than their neighborhood. 

NWS GSP tried to tackle this problem by offering "mountain top" forecast for several major peaks of southern Appalachians on top of their website. It was very useful for hiking when I was in college, but I think they took it down now :( 

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2 minutes ago, WxBlue said:

NWS GSP tried to tackle this problem by offering "mountain top" forecast for several major peaks of southern Appalachians on top of their website. It was very useful for hiking when I was in college, but I think they took it down now :( 

We do something similar with our REC forecast, with average forecasts in the 2500-4000 foot range, and above 4000 feet. But it's still an average of many grid points and quite a range of elevations.

Even our grid point for MWN covers everything from the peak (6288) to the north into the West Branch Peabody River draw around 4000 feet. That's a huge range.

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5 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

We do something similar with our REC forecast, with average forecasts in the 2500-4000 foot range, and above 4000 feet. But it's still an average of many grid points and quite a range of elevations.

Even our grid point for MWN covers everything from the peak (6288) to the north into the West Branch Peabody River draw around 4000 feet. That's a huge range.

You have no way to set the elevation for a particular gridpoint? I mean, if someone is clicking on MWN they obviously want the 6288 forecast and not some wind eroded rock at 4837. 

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2 minutes ago, dendrite said:

You have no way to set the elevation for a particular gridpoint? I mean, if someone is clicking on MWN they obviously want the 6288 forecast and not some wind eroded rock at 4837. 

The other thing to do is go back to the good old days.  When forecasts were like,  lows tomorrow tonight will be  in the low to mid 30's.  Everything is now to the degree.  Ridiculous on the 7 days ( in general, not picking a fight with the NWS but TV's internet etc. etc. ) when they show the high and low to that level.  As much as you can get the P&C accurate to 100 feet if the model data is off as a whole then the P&C's will be off too...

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3 minutes ago, dendrite said:

You have no way to set the elevation for a particular gridpoint? I mean, if someone is clicking on MWN they obviously want the 6288 forecast and not some wind eroded rock at 4837. 

The only way is to edit the MWN grid point as if it were only covering 6288. Which is typically what I do. We have MOS data for 6288 feet so I use it, all other elevations be damned. 

MWN is the easy example. For Alex it's more difficult. Is his backyard more important than someone else 2.5 km down the road? 

Our new national blend of models is supposed to take of some of that, by doing bias correction on each individual grid point. But that is doing bias correct off a model background field (you can see the problems with that), and doesn't include Euro data. In my experience is also is terrible with radiational cooling. 

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Look at the poor weenie that vacations on Peaks Island in the summer. They click the center of the island and get this grid point. More than half of it is in Casco Bay. Yet based on that web forecast people think we can nail their backyard BBQ to the degree. I can all but guarantee the average user doesn't know or notice that their forecast is an average of the green box.

2017-10-18_13-19-33.png.dfcca06b8dd6d5c513bc49d08c0694ee.png

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36 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

Look at the poor weenie that vacations on Peaks Island in the summer. They click the center of the island and get this grid point. More than half of it is in Casco Bay. Yet based on that web forecast people think we can nail their backyard BBQ to the degree. I can all but guarantee the average user doesn't know or notice that their forecast is an average of the green box.

2017-10-18_13-19-33.png.dfcca06b8dd6d5c513bc49d08c0694ee.png

I noticed this about Monhegan Island also. You get a grip and not the whole Island. Made no difference to me but some people do not look at the details.

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7 minutes ago, Met1985 said:

I noticed this about Monhegan Island also. You get a grip and not the whole Island. Made no difference to me but some people do not look at the details.

We've actually trained the zone forecast to only count land area for the coastal islands and necks, but we have zero control over the P&C. 

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1 hour ago, OceanStWx said:

We do something similar with our REC forecast, with average forecasts in the 2500-4000 foot range, and above 4000 feet. But it's still an average of many grid points and quite a range of elevations.

Even our grid point for MWN covers everything from the peak (6288) to the north into the West Branch Peabody River draw around 4000 feet. That's a huge range.

Ahh I see. I'd imagine that's the case for points in Smokies, along the Appalachian Trail, and at the top of Mt. Mitchell (6,684 feet). I didn't think about the possibility they're doing the average of two set elevation points.

For what is worth, New Englanders, I think Mt. Washington is more impressive visually than Mt. Mitchell. The latter is embedded in rows of ridges so you can't see the whole mountain.

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2 hours ago, WxBlue said:

NWS GSP tried to tackle this problem by offering "mountain top" forecast for several major peaks of southern Appalachians on top of their website. It was very useful for hiking when I was in college, but I think they took it down now :( 

BTV has a whole Mountain Rec page where you can get peak specific forecasts for most main mountains in VT and Adirondacks.

http://www.weather.gov/btv/recreation

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5 minutes ago, Lava Rock said:

How about getting as detailed as hillside locations, lol. Seriously, I see forecast lows for my area and know for a fact that most times, they will not hit the predicted low.

Or rainfall. :devilsmiley:

4 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

BTV has a whole Mountain Rec page where you can get peak specific forecasts for most main mountains in VT and Adirondacks.

They might be getting more detailed by just taking the points for each peak, rather than just taking whole swaths of elevations. That page is pretty slick actually.

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27 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

BTV has a whole Mountain Rec page where you can get peak specific forecasts for most main mountains in VT and Adirondacks.

http://www.weather.gov/btv/recreation

 

21 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

Or rainfall. :devilsmiley:

They might be getting more detailed by just taking the points for each peak, rather than just taking whole swaths of elevations. That page is pretty slick actually.

 

That's it. That map of mountain points with MOS-like forecast summary is what GSP did for Smokies/Blue Ridge peaks.

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3 minutes ago, WxBlue said:

That's it. That map of mountain points with MOS-like forecast summary is what GSP did for Smokies/Blue Ridge peaks.

We could easily steal that code from BTV and do something like that ourselves. Though it gets a little dicey when you start providing a forecast for say Jay Peak, when it's also a money making ski mountain that could be paying a private company for that forecast. :ph34r:

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