berrywr
(Weather Analyst)
Sun Sep 07 2008 04:30 AM
Re: intensity forecasts for Ike will be a crap shoot

http://weather.noaa.gov/fax/nwsfax.html

This is the link for the NWS's Fax Page. If you have Image Viewer, Office 2007 you shouldn't have any problems opening these files which are TIFF and PNG. I cannot say enough about the detail on these charts and if you can open the 850, 700, 500 mb charts, I want everybody to pay attention to all those numbers and letters off the coast of FL. That's NOAA and the Hurricane Hunters sampling the environment, dropsondes, etc. It is that data that added to other RAOB, PIREPS to make up these charts. Most forecasters re-analyze the data on these charts, particularly contours and change of heights over the past 12 and 24 hours, and given where Hanna was 24 hours ago, you're going to see some big changes where Hanna was tonight, particularly with heights. These charts are like the surface analysis, but they are current upper air analysis which all model data is based on. What I do is print off these charts and then compare them to previous progged positions for this time frame. That is how we know what model is performing best and any single point in time. Models are a headache!



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