Storm sampling

[regionrat]

John,
How important is it when developing a forecast for the energy of a storm system to be fully sampled? Once the energy is sampled, are the models significantly more accurate? What information does the sampling provide, and how does it fit into a forecast? Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. I appreciate it.

 

[jd]

There really is no "sampling" done, it is really more collection. Data is collected from pretty much the same spots every day at specific times. The exception to this is data collected from commercial aircraft and ships. So when a storm is coming, there is no more data collected than when things are quiet.

The only time sampling is done is for a tropical feature, like a tropical wave, tropical storm or hurricane.

I can say that the more data you have to start with, the better the forecast would be.

-John