Tips for the Gulf South TV Forecaster
Moving to a new TV market is tough. I’m putting together some of the most important websites you’ll need to hit the ground running. Good Luck! Since the Gulf South is driven in a large part by the tropics during the summertime, you will have many days of frustation before you begin to learn the patterns and the different small scale boundaries that can develop. Severe weather develops rapidly, especially in the fall, winter and spring. Even a summertime thunderstorm can cause flooding in the streets. Of course snow is not a common occurence, but if you get all the right ingredients, you will have a miracle snow day during a cold winter.
Looking at the radar and satellite, (if your shop doesn’t have what you need, go to the National Weather Service Eastern Region Headquarters and Aviation Weather) to get a general idea of the weather pattern.
Use your synoptic scale models (large scale models) to get storm placement, flow patterns, and 850 mb temperatures, and precipitation amounts (this is available at Unisys Weather), and make a short-term forecast. Look at atmospheric forecast soundings site, especially if thunderstorms are expected, to determine severity. Make sure you visit the Storm Prediction Center to see if you are in a risk category for thunderstorms.
Generally, your local NWS office can give you the risk of inland flooding due to repeated storms, but here’s a link to the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center – Inland Flooding in case that is a concern during repeated storm events or a tropical storm has moved inland.
Tides are extremely important for coastal communities, here’s a link to Tide Predictions for Gulf States. Marine and boating forecasters also generally use buoy data. NOAA Buoys Gulf of Mexico
Make an extended 7-day forecast using the latest and most complete suite of extended model runs (e.g. the GFS), available at NCEP Model Analyses and Forecasts.
Also, you’ll need a temperature forecast to compare all of your graphical data against for a highs/lows forecast. The best place to find MOS (Model Output Statistics) is Current NWS MOS Forecast Products.
When it comes to tropical weather, which can also often be a player, things can get even more interesting, here’s a link to my blog on Tracking Hurricanes.
Oh! One added note, sea fog can develop in the wintertime along the Gulf South. The NWS Office in New Orleans has a decision tree Sea Fog Forecasting to help you forecast a sea fog event in the wintertime. It’s fascinating!
Meet Dr. William Gray, Hurricane Forecaster
I met Dr. William Gray when he was in New Orleans for the American Meteorological Society annual meeting in January 2008. While we were walking along the infamous site of the 17th Street Canal levee break in Lakeview, a tour bus stopped to point him out. He waved, getting quite a chuckle out of his renown here along the Gulf South for his yearly seasonal hurricane outlooks. In Fort Collins, Colorado, where he lives and does his research, he was always known as the Mayor’s husband. His wife Nancy (now deceased) was the one people were stopping to greet.
He wanted to be famous when he was young, but for slinging a baseball. “I wanted to be a pitcher,” Gray said.
His baseball dreams stunted by a knee injury, Gray graduated from George Washington University with a degree in geography. He was working on his masters when World War II intervened. Like other meteorologists of his generation, he was trained to forecast weather during the war. Gray was stationed in the middle of the Atlantic on the Azores, an island chain 900 miles off the coast of Portugal, providing forecasts for the Trans-Atlantic flights. At that time, there were no satellites and no computers. “I got a lot of good weather experience.”
At the end of the war, Gray decided to continue his career in meteorology under the tutelage of Dr. Herbert Riehl in Chicago, whom Gray calls the most prominent tropical meteorologist of his time. “The new National Hurricane Research Project had just been formed,” and so in 1958, Riehl and Gray began flying into the center of hurricanes. Dr. Gray wrote his Master/PhD thesis from the flight data gathered during these flights into the center of the storms, describing the internal structure of these storms.
In 1961, Dr. Herbert Riehl moved to Chicago, and offered Gray a job in his department at Colorado State University. Still based far from hurricane country, Gray began spending every summer in Florida, chasing hurricanes. But, there was one big problem. “We would go to Florida every year and wonder was this going to be an active season?”
Dr. Gray states the Atlantic Ocean Basin has the largest year to year variability when it comes to tropical cyclones. “Some years there just weren’t many storms, other years a whole lot of storms and the question is we couldn’t tell before the season. It was completely random.” Gray told me.
In the early part of the 1980s, after Dr. Gray had been flying into storms for 3 decades, he noticed a parallel between two data sets he had collected: the formation of El Nino in the Pacific Ocean and the lack of tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Ocean Basin. During an El Nino year, there would be less tropical cyclone activity in the Atlantic Ocean. The term El Nino refers to the periodic warming of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America. For years, it’s mainly been the bane of the Western United States, because it can lead to flooding rains and mudslides. But, in the Atlantic, it leads to wind shear, and wind shear is bad for hurricanes. (Wind shear is a change in wind direction or speed with height.)
When Dr. Gray made the discovery back in the 1980s, it didn’t receive much attention because there weren’t very many storms. But in the last 15 years, the Southeastern United States has been hit by one devastating storm after another. And populations across the Eastern United States and Gulf of Mexico began waiting for his predictions and whether it spelled another active year, or a relatively quiet season. Nowadays, most of his research is done by Dr. Phil Klotzbach, the main author on the seasonal outlooks. Their research and outlook forecasts are much more complicated, based on worldwide weather patterns, and ocean temperatures around the globe.
And, he’s got competition. Forecasters at North Carolina State, the Weather Research Center in Houston, and European forecasters all put out a seasonal hurricane forecast, among others.
However, the official hurricane outlook published by NOAA at the beginning of hurricane season still most resembles the forecast parameters discovered by Dr. Gray.
Tips for the TV Forecaster in the Northeast
Moving to a new TV market is tough. I’m putting together some of the most important websites you’ll need to hit the ground running. Good Luck!
Forecasting in the Northeast can be overwhelming, especially if you start in the middle of winter! You could be dealing with lake effect snow, ice storms, sleet, freezing rain and blizzards! Here are some of the best web links to get your forecast off the computer and on the air.
After looking at the radar and satellite, (if your shop doesn’t have what you need, go to the National Weather Service Eastern Region Headquarters and Aviation Weather), follow these steps to make a forecast:
Take a look at Unisys Weather at your synoptic scale models to get storm placement, flow patterns, and 850 mb temperatures (this is available at Unisys Weather). Unisys also has the local Skew-T’s, but forecast soundings are also available here.
After you’ve figured out what’s going on in the larger scale, you can get down to the more nitty-gritty mesoscale (especially for lake-effect and even rain/snow lines). What I typically use for this is a tool called BUFKIT which is available at Buffalo, NY National Weather Service for download along with the required data sets.
Also, especially good for lake-effect snow, is the MM5 model, which is available at SUNY Stony Brook MM5 Mesoscale Forecasts.
To wrap this up and get a good idea of the next 7 days of weather, a good standby for the latest and most complete suite of extended model runs (e.g. the GFS) is NCEP Model Analyses and Forecasts.
Of course, you’ll also need a temperature forecast to compare all of your graphical data against for a highs/lows forecast. The best place to find MOS (Model Output Statistics) is Current NWS MOS Forecast Products.
If you’d like to learn more about forecasting lake-effect snow or other winter weather phenomena, check out this website MetEd Home Page and become a member.
Another great option is to check out Haby Hints, developed by meteorologist Jeff Haby from Mississippi State University. You can go to his website and search for pretty much any weather term, and get an easy explanation of how to predict and forecast weather.
Happy forecasting!
Tracking Hurricanes
Okay… I don’t want to overwhelm you with hurricane weather pages. You can visit a million pages, and still come up with the same result—the hurricane is headed in your direction. However, in this day and age, you can track a hurricane as often as the satellite captures its image. I have a few descriptions of these web pages to help you wade through.
Basic Hurricane Data
National Hurricane Center (Has the latest storms, 5-day track forecasts, satellite imagery, analysis and frequently asked questions. It does NOT have computer models-see below.)
Weather Underground Hurricane Page (Dr. Jeff Masters has compiled such a thorough page, it has latest storms, tracks, computer models, and a dozen websites to help you analyze a storm.)
Storm Pulse (Very pretty website with easy to understand track plots of current storms.)
Guide To Hurricanes (Cool website from Scientific American that explains why hurricanes occur.)
Central Florida Hurricane Center (Good website with lots of data.)
Skeetobite Weather ( I like skeetobite’s dropdown menus, easy to find info.)
Crown Weather Services (Crown has a useful blog about the storms’ as well.)
Millennium Weather (Kind of a techy website, not easy to use.)
Unisys Weather Hurricane Page ( I mainly use this for historical information.)
Hurricane Computer Models – for the Weather Expert (and Geek too)
Florida State University Experimental Tropical Cyclone Genesis Page (Forecasters like this one because it shows frame by frame the possible track, and possible intensification.)
Weather Underground’s GFS Model ( I like this one… it shows the Atlantic basin, and has easy to read color contours)
National Weather Service Hurricane Models (NCEP) (Provided by the National Center for Environmental Prediction, this shows the computer models put out by the National Weather Service-most importantly the GFDL (GHM), GFS and HWRF.)
Canadian Model (I look at the GEM to see if it’s in line with the other forecasts.)
ECMWF – European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Model (The ECMWF is one model that the NHC watches to see if it diverges from computer models sponsored by the United States. It’s relied on heavily during hurricane season. If you read the NHC discussions on storms, it will often say ECMWF.)
Colorado State Track Model Guidance (A lot of people like this track model guidance, because it shows you a dozen computer model tracks, and shows whether there is an agreement or disagreement among the hurricane computer models. Take note: it shows some unsophisticated models.)
MIT’s Track & Intensity Guidance (This page isn’t “pretty” but it’s pretty easy to understand. There’s a graph to show the computer model for intensity forecast, and the forecast model tracks.)
WX Forecaster’s Hurricane Page (This is a website put together by a forecaster for forecasters… gotta love this guy!)
The Navy’s Weather Forecasting Website (During hurricane season, everyone wants to know which is better the NOGAPS or the GFDL, especially if they disagree. Both are global models, the GFDL is run and researched by the NHC. As far as statistics, the National Hurricane Center track “bests” all models at most forecast times.)
Explanation of Computer Models
Dr. Jeff Master’s Explanation of Hurricane Models (Dr. Jeff Masters, the Director of Meteorology for Weather Underground has a more detailed description of the hurricane computer models is you would like something else to refer to.)
Table Listing Computer Models and Summaries by NHC (This link has a summary of the hurricane computer models. You can find out the actual name of the model—it lists the name as well as abbreviation. For example, the GFDL is the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory model, and also has a technical description for you.)
National Hurricane Center FAQ’s – Hurricane Models (And for one more explanation, you can go to the NHC’s Frequently Asked Questions website.)
Interpretation of Hurricane Forecasts (This is a GREAT website to thoroughly understand what the TV weather anchors are talking about when they show you the CONE OF UNCERTAINTY.)
Hurricane Formation – for the Weather Geek!
NCEP Cyclogenesis Tracking Page