JLCY Homepage

Joseph (Cheuk Yi) Lee name.

Ph.D. Candidate, ATOC, CU Boulder

Forecasting

Ithaca, New York

I have been participating in the in-house Cornell meteorology forecast competition (12Z to 12Z temperature and precipitation forecast at Game Farm Road weather station) for years now and here are some of the free forecasting tools I use:

Game Farm Road Data Logger

http://www.nrcc.cornell.edu/climate/ithaca/gfr_logger.html

The data logger is located at the east end of Cornell University (24º 26.950', -76º 26.942') with other instrumentation. Its ground-based hourly observations are essential for short-term forecasting.

NWS Weather Observations at Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport

http://w1.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KITH.html

Same as above, the observations about 4 miles North of Game Farm Road weather station are useful. Day time dew point temperature and pressure tendency are good meteorological indicators from this site. It has a tendency to freeze in the winter, though.

NWS Area Forecast Discussion

http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&issuedby=BGM&product=AFD
&format=CI&version=1&glossary=1&highlight=off

The synopsis issued by the Binghamton NWS office is good way to understand the general weather setup in a timely manner.

SPC Mesoscale Analysis

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/sfctest/new/viewsector.php?sector=19&parm=pmsl

SPC maps are one of my favorites to get a quick look at the current (or archived) observations.

Surface METAR Observations

http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/surface/

Ground-based surface observations is a meteorologist's best friend.

NWS Difax Charts

http://www.atmos.albany.edu/weather/difax.html

Maintained by SUNY Albany, difax charts are one of the rare old style upper air weather maps that give height tendencies.

NWS Weather Prediction Center

http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/

Despite all kinds of animated images, I recommend using its current color-coded surface maps with pressure tendencies.

Model Output Statistics (MOS)

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/mos/getmet.pl?sta=KBGM&sta=KELM&sta=
KITH&sta=KSYR

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/mos/getmav.pl?sta=KBGM&sta=KELM&sta=
KITH&sta=KSYR

Combining the MOS outputs of Binghamton, Elmira, Ithaca and Syracuse, which are the four nearest airports of Ithaca, generates a reliable forecast. Note that Elmira's valley geography is similar to Game Farm Road weather station's.

e-Wall

http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~fxg1/ewall.html

The forecasting treasure maintained by Penn State. The high-resolution NAM model outputs and the spatial maps of MOS outputs are very handy.

Saslo

http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/~saslo/weather.html

An old friend of mine, who is a fellow graduate student at UCLA, maintains short-range forecasts of the northeast region, including daily WRF runs. He won Cornell's forecast contest several times; he knows the weather.

To summarize my experience on using MOS, I wrote a statistical regression program called "Tron" in early 2013, and it has been a very competitive participant in the contest. Daily updates of its forecasts will be constructed shortly. Stay tune!