Winter Forecase Performance of an Operations Mesoscale Modelling System in the Northeast U.S. -- Winter 2002-2003

We examine the winter season forecast performance of an operational mesoscale modelling system dubbed Deep Thunder over the northeast United States. Model skill is compared with significant snowfall events during the 2002-2003 season as well as considering the operational availability of such results.

The Deep Thunder system has been running operationally since January 2001 at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY with focus on the New York City metropolitan area (Treinish and Praino, 2004). Figure 1 shows the domain configuration for the 4 km and 1 km nests, with the boundary of the latter marked in red on this terrain map. Locations of National Weather Service Metar reporting stations used for verification purposes are shown in white. Selected airport (IATA) locations and municipal centers are indicated in black.

In order to characterize the model's winter seasonal performance, we focus on the December 2002 through April 2003 time period. This particular winter season offered several interesting opportunities to study the model's performance for coastal storms and heavy snow in the northeastern United States. We will present qualitative results of the study of seven major snow events impacting the New York City metropolitan region.

By: Anthony P. Praino, Lloyd A. Treinish

Published in: RC23073 in 2003

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