Identification

Title

Mesoscale predictability of the "surprise" snowstorm of 24-25 January 2000

Abstract

A mesoscale model is used here to investigate the possible sources of forecast error for the 24-25 January 2000 snowstorm along the east coast of the United States. The primary focus is the quantitative precipitation forecast out to lead times of 36 h. The success of the present high-resolution control forecast shows that the storm could have been well forecasted with conventional data in real time. Various experiments suggest that insufficient model grid resolution and errors in the initial conditions both contributed significantly to problems in the forecast. Other experiments, motivated by the possibility that the forecast errors arose from the operational analysis poorly fitting one or two key soundings, test the effects of withholding single soundings from the control initial conditions. While no single sounding results in forecast changes that are more than a small fraction of the error in the operational forecast, these experiments do reveal that the detailed mesoscale distribution of precipitation in the 24- or 36-h forecast can be significantly altered even by such small changes in the initial conditions. The experiments also reveal that the forecast changes arise from the rapid growth of error at scales below 500 km in association with moist processes. The results presented emphasize the difficulty of forecasting precipitation relative to, say, surface pressure and suggest that the predictability of mesoscale precipitation features in cases of the type studied here may be limited to less than 2-3 days.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d72z163m

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2002-06-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Copyright 2002 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the AMS's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, requires written permission or a license form the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy, available on the AMS Web site located at (http://www.ametsoc.org/AMS) or from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or copyright@ametsoc.org.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact