Struggling Models

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bladeguy

Member
Hi John!

In today's forecast you said "the models have been struggling with such features recently." It certainly is true this year! My questions are:
1. Are the models struggling this year because of some unusual atmospheric condition this year or is it because they have changed the algorithm in the models and the change has caused them to struggle. This leads to my second question:
2. I assume the algorithms the models use to predict the weather get updated from time to time.
a. Is this true?
b. How often does this happen and do you get informed when they change?

Thanks!
 
R

rocky367

Member
From my limited understanding of the models they all struggle at times with conditions, as they are only as good as the data put in. Lately they have been having issues with how long this cold air is sticking around and in my opinion (John may correct me) because of seasonal changes starting to appear.
They do get an updates and they are infrequent but do occur, in fact one just happened several weeks ago and now new biases have occurred.

And there are sites out there that do notify you of when upgrades happen, usually the sites that provide model data will have notices up.

Now, I'm no met but I do stormspotting/ dabble in chasing so I'm trying to learn models for my own interest so don't take my knowledge as golden, I'm sure John will do a much better job than me.
 
Admin

Admin

Administrator
Staff member
When ever there are multiple jetstreams impacting the US, it can throw the models for a loop, as they are really designed to best handle one predominate jetstream at a time. That has been the main issue at times this winter.

As far as changing/upgrading the models. That happens on a pretty regular basis. Most of the time for the better, sometimes not.
 
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