I am in no way affiliated to this website but have generally been a fan of the IFR Mastery series and have recently bought the online workshop course on the use of Skew-T diagrammes:
https://pilotworkshop.com/products/mastering-the-skew-t/
I personally found it very useful and enlightening and would recommend it to others. I was initially sceptical to its use as I assumed that it will be very US-focused (which it is in terms of examples discussed) but given that it uses the RUC NOAA sounding tool which can be used to plot GFS soundings I gave it a try nonetheless and was proven wrong.
Yes; skew-t are brilliant diagrams.
The limitation is the data itself. It is easy to generate the most wonderful graphics but the data may not be good enough. In most cases we (GA pilots, looking at free websites) see it is usually the US GFS data. This is the only wx model which is free and available as a 3D data set.
And GFS is not that accurate. For example the Gramet produced by the Autorouter is fiction most of the time, when it comes to depicting clouds. Gramets have been available for years – I have some stuff here – but they were never much good, even if the graphics looked great.
It would be better if we had the ECMWF model available but it isn’t. You can get it on windy.com but with limitations on what can be displayed. I don’t recall the details but it came up here recently. So windy.com is probably the most accurate wx source you can get for Europe right now.
I agree completely.Windy is great and efficient.That’s my opinion.
Well.
Soundings actually normally are generated using balloon ascent data. That is the base for them.
Good program on learning how to read them. And yes, interpreting soundings is a tremendously helpful skill.
Model soundings are a totally different thing as they base on a) the balloon data and b) the rest of the model being processed by a computer which would most times not fit in your house and would buy you half a city to own :)
as for people using GFS… well, yea because it’s free. And for certain things it is adequate, such as inflight winds e.t.c. it is not doing such a bad job. I remember downloading GFS for winds in our airline program as a backup to the ECMW data packs and differences were not earth shattering. But is is a very low resolution model (naturally as it is global) and it therefore has few if any ideas about things which in the scope of it’s use are of limited significance, such as large mountain chains e.t.c.
there are much better models available, unfortunately for free only in the US an limited to that area. ECMFF and the Cosmo series are totally different animals.But their owners want $$$ for their use. And as nobody really wants to pay for this or licence them, we do the same as we do with lots of other things… we go the cheapo way.
One Bulgarian friend of mine on the application of sanitary silicon in gluing a panel to a wall: “Economy is the mother of Misery” Well, there you go.
I wonder if any flight planners at all use the high res models for Europe? Or what it would take financially to update the Autorouter weathe data with hi res model data? Has anyone actually ever talked to the DWD? They are quite positive towards GA (as you can see in their brilliant PC Met site)… and I just wonder.
I spoke to someone from DWD at the AERO last year and he mentioned that they are developing a website whereby somebody could get a point sounding or a cross-section diagram for any point on a map covered by the ICON model. The output would be similar to the predefined sounding points and cross-section diagrams already offered.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make the AERO this year so maybe someone can ask DWD there (I will try to find the person’s business card).
IMHO, I have not found ICON forecasts for the next 24 hours to be necessarily better than the GFS forecasts, I think ICON (and ECMWF) is potentially better at long-range forecasts.
Whenever I fly into Egelsbach, I have the choice to use EDDF or ETOU (Wiesbaden USAF base) TAFS as both airports are reasonably close to each other and they are often very different. In many cases I have found the ETOU TAF to be more accurate (sometimes I look at the EDDF forecast and think it is overly optimistic). I assume USAF use GFS whilst EDDF are based on ICON unless USAF have developed their own proprietary forecast.
I find the ECMWF data (as on windy.com) to be much better than GFS for the 2-5 days ahead scenario.
If they offered skew-t plots, or cloud cross-sections, that would be a step forward. This has been a holy grail for so long – ever since some Swiss student (?) did the original meteoblue.com (which I talk about in my writeup linked above) as his PhD thesis but which was more pretty graphics than reality.
One issue with GFS is the update frequency. I am not sure what it is now but it used to be every 12hrs or so and thus you could be using quite old data.
wbardorf wrote:
Whenever I fly into Egelsbach, I have the choice to use EDDF or ETOU (Wiesbaden USAF base) TAFS as both airports are reasonably close to each other and they are often very different. In many cases I have found the ETOU TAF to be more accurate (sometimes I look at the EDDF forecast and think it is overly optimistic). I assume USAF use GFS whilst EDDF are based on ICON unless USAF have developed their own proprietary forecast.
In Sweden at least, TAFs for military airports are made by on-site meteorologists while TAFs for other airports are not. That can make quite a difference for the accuracy in favour of military TAFs.
Supersonic wrote:
Right-click on any place on rhe map and then the last option („Aerologie“ in German).
Wow. That is really impressive.
Peter wrote:
One issue with GFS is the update frequency. I am not sure what it is now but it used to be every 12hrs or so and thus you could be using quite old data.
Two times a day is more than enough for a model with this resolution. GFS works very well considering what it is, but it is NOT a high resolution model and never was intended to be one.
wbardorf wrote:
). I assume USAF use GFS whilst EDDF are based on ICON unless USAF have developed their own proprietary forecast.
I am not sure what they use but it is a good guess that the DWD will use ICON, the USAF will use whatever they have and they do have more than GFS. However, TAF’s get (to this point at least) written by humans so their experience and knowledge have a very large part to do with the final product. The base for a TAF are the last couple of METARS and you take it from there. Models are part of that process, but not only. One bit how you can do that (not necessarily how they do that but a good guess would be they also work along these lines) is that you look at all the available models and compare the results, then check other possible means such as ensemble forecasts e.t.c. and combine all that with what you know about each model and the local climate.
We also have a saying that St. Peter (who according to some is responsible for the weather) does either not know the models or has a field day making fun of them. Or a bit more serious, the weather does not follow anyones schedule. Model runs even of the most recent and most advanced models can go from sunny to pear shaped in 2-3 runs.
GFS may have one factor in built as it is worldwide and that is that it may be a bit more sluggish than the high res models, which can be a benefit in some scenarios and a problem in others. While ICON and other high res models sometimes are a bit jumpy in certain conditions, GFS may appear more stable as it does not have all the influences high res models take into account.
Peter wrote:
I find the ECMWF data (as on windy.com) to be much better than GFS for the 2-5 days ahead scenario.
For flight planning purposes, anything but the last one or two runs (depending on the update frequency) has anything to do with the truth, everything before is a guess at most. A front is considered to be “on time” if it arrives over a position within 6-12 hours of when it has been forecast 24 hours before… so imagine what kind of impact that has. Also, the longer a model calculates ahead, the more extremes become extremer. (Not unlike certain climate models who regularly predict the end of the world btw).
My pet peeve at my day job are folks who check their Weather Pro or other automated 10-30 day forecasts and start needling us why the weather did not comply. For me, while weather pro and other such sites can give a very educated first hunch and can be surprisingly accurate in stable conditions, basing your lunch on them can keep you hungry more often than you care for.
24 hours ahead I’d say 80-90% accuracy, 48 hours 60-70% and everything beyond that needs a good meteorologist to make head or toe of. Particularly when it comes to extremes.
Is it worth learning to interpret SkewT diagrams, considering that we have a vertical cut from the Autorouter & Windy? Do you find SkewT data is more accurate in some way or maybe it provides an additional info that’s not on Windy or Router?
