GFS And The Estimated Water Bill...Added : Thursday at 13:45 "How much?!"
"Well, it says we have used 49 cubic metres of water!"
"What's that in olympic sized swimming pools?"
Ahh, the estimated water bill has come in and once again it's a million light years away from where the final figure will be once they have realised that we don't leave our taps running 24/7 at Metcheck HQ. But, estimated bills are sometimes a little like the longer range charts of numerical weather models.
You see, they base the output on what is currently observed and try their best to apply numerical calculations as to how this will appear over the next few weeks, but sometimes they get it wrong, badly wrong, but are they picking up on something.
For this discussion we will take a look at the longer range period of the GFS ► and head straight to the middle of next week :-
This little blighter needs watching. The GFS ► as well as a few other global models are hinting at this low pressure system across parts of the UK which is rather close to tapping into some colder air from the Northeast.
You can see this from the upper air temperatures for the same period :-
Still a while off, but we are keeping an eye on this due to the impressive agreement from the GEM and ECMWF ► for a system akin to this one.
Looking a little further ahead and it's this high pressure system which is causing some fun and games with the GFS, this one is out estimated water bill :-
At this point, we are at T+240 which is 10 days away and obviously taken with a large amount of salt. But some of the recent GFS ► runs as well as ensembles have been touting with the idea of this high pressure system moving North and hooking up with the Greenland high which in turn brings an impressive Easterly wind through the first half of February.
The 6z is having none of it, but the GFS ► has been rather good at sounding out these ideas in the longer term, ignoring them and then coming back to the idea a few runs later.
The question though for us is what is promoting this ridging and whether there is anything in the upper air patterns which is likely to assist it?
If we look at the polar vortex then you can see it's pretty well established at the moment with no signs of disruption :-
But then, the Polar Vortex has been a rather poor indicator of upper level blocking this winter and has really struggled to couple with lower level pressure patterns.
Worth keeping an eye on the longer range GFS ► charts over the next day or two though as we submit our meter reading online in the hope that the estimate was completely wrong, but it will be in the next few days whether we find out whether we did in fact fill an olympic sized swimming pool or not...
METEOROLOGIST : DOINGBACKSTROKE |