Ice problems Saturday (Dec 1) across portions of Kansas? It sure looks like this is a plausible scenario. This is the first post of several, I would imagine, as I have interest in this system from a forecasting standpoint and the complexities of precipitation type forecasting. Look for official National Weather Service forecasts concerning this system for Southwest Kansas, issued by yours truly, as I’ll be working midnight shifts forecasting for the Fri-Sat time period (Nov 30-Dec 1). Anyway, the first post about this storm relates to the different forecasts for Saturday, Dec 1st (and oh are they different!) among the Weather Channel, AccuWeather, and the National Weather Service. Refer to the following images. The set of images below are forecasts for Saturday in Dodge City from each of the three services:
AccuWeather ^
The Weather Channel ^
National Weather Service ^
The temperature forecast challenge, as you can see just by comparing these 3 forecasts, is about as great as it gets. That said, biases aside, I believe the National Weather Service forecast, given local expertise, is the superior forecast, especially considering shallow arctic airmasses. An arctic front will push through Friday, and numerical models always have a hard time with a) the degree of cold air pushing south and b) scouring the shallow cold airmass out too fast. This has huge implications, of course, for precipitation type. Currently, only the National Weather Service is forecasting any possibility of freezing rain. Neither the Weather Channel nor AccuWeather show any possibility of freezing rain — even for Hays, KS north of here (images not shown, but I have them available!). This post isn’t to rag on the other weather services, because the storm hasn’t even occurred yet, but I will say that given the lack of local expertise from The Weather Channel and AccuWeather, their High Plains weather forecasts will almost always be inferior to those forecasts from the meteorologists who actually live out here and know the local tendencies, for instance, when shallow arctic air invades in the winter time. We’ll see what happens, it will be an interesting storm to say the least! I love forecasting winter weather! -Mike U