National Weather Service experiences delays to key weather forecast model

By Kristina Pydynowski, Senior Meteorologist

March 20,2016; 9:04PM,EDT

 

 

As a snowstorm eyes the northeastern United States, a key weather forecast tool experienced delays.
The latest model run of the Global Forecast System (GFS) was significantly delayed and not accessible to forecasters for nearly two hours.
In a statement, the National Weather Service's National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) stated that the GFS was delayed due to a problem with pre-processing before the model analysis started.
Above is an example of one parameter of NCEP's GFS model that meteorologists use.
"Satellite data was available for the model analysis; however, no point upper-air or aircraft data was included," NCEP stated when the GFS finally began to run.
Limited data ingested into the model analysis could result in a degraded model run.
"AccuWeather's forecasts will not be impacted by this issue as our forecasters and forecast systems make use of a variety of weather forecast models, delivered from all over the world in construction of our global forecasts," AccuWeather Vice President of Research and Development Jonathan Porter said.
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"This type of delay with the GFS, the U.S. primary global forecast model, is very unusual and will cause challenges across the weather community as forecasters perform last-minute tweaks to the forecast on the impending significant snowstorm in the northeastern U.S.," Porter said.
"Additionally, the GFS model as a global forecast model is used by weather forecasters all over the world to prepare their forecasts and serve as needed input to other forecast models, which operate at a higher resolution of detail over a smaller area."
The GFS and other computer models are tools meteorologists use to determine timing, snow amounts, precipitation type, temperatures and a variety of other impactful information during a snowstorm.

Yehuda Tsvi David Langner

I remember in the early 1980's when New York got 10 inches of snow right before Passover

Like · Reply · 1 · 2 hrs

Kevin Sealy ·

St. John's University

This the time of year when the New York metro area can experience weather extremes. We could get big snowstorms, may be not as big as 18-24 inches and we can go right into temperatures in the 80s. On March 22, 1998 NYC got 5" after having the winter season with only an half an inch. The following week we had four days of temperatures in the 80s