The posts in this forum are NOT official forecast and should not be used as such. They are just the opinion of the poster and may or may not be backed by sound meteorological data. They are NOT endorsed by any professional institution or 
shibumi wrote:Texas Snowman...
That is one of the concerns over this point forecast system....how can you have a forecast with a high of 34 one day then a low of 28 with mention of rain and thunderstorms without mentioning the words ice, sleet, freezing rain, or snow?
if the thunderstorm occurs when the temperature is 34, you would not have ice (freezing rain) and may not have sleet either. There is the potential for snow, but a lot of the thunderstorms that develop in the winter across this part of the country and due, in large part, to warm advection above the surface. This would tend to limit snow, sleet, ice potential (assuming the sfc temp is above freezing). The precip forecast may be focused on a period of time that above freezing temps are expected. The other thing could be the formatter for the point-and-click forecast. It may be set up to use the dominant weather. For instance, you could have thundersnow in your forecast, but the formatter recognized thunderstorm as the dominant precip type and only included it. I don't know for sure. That is only one theory.
That point forecast is not put out by a human....I think some of that is automated...
Wrong. For those that don't know...the "human" forecasters produce gridded forecasts. These are graphical forecasts of every parameter seen in a forecast based on 5 km X 5 km grid boxes. These human produced grid boxes are simply read by the point-and-click formatters by displaying the corresponding forecast information. The formatters are the only thing automated about the process. If the forecast is out of whack, its a good bet that the grid was produced incorrectly. I will say that the derived forecasts (i.e. Wind chill, RH, Heat Index) are technically not human produced, but they are developed solely based on the forecast temperature, dewpoint, wind grids, so I wouldn't call them automated. any questions on the process, just ask and I'll try to clarify better.
JB was yelling about this a lot this past week.....as well as knocking the ASOS system for inaccurrate and untimely observation reports....
Tell him to get in line. ASOS quality control issues get blamed on the NWS. Basically, the maintenence is the only think the NWS controls. We do not have the authority to QC the data before it is sent out, nor can we send corrections. I've seen equally bad obs come out of the sites that are manned by contract observers. These are FAA issues, not NWS.
