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Lessons Learned
Forecasting Weeks for Caribou, ME,
Jackson, MS, and Grand Junction, CO
Introduction
Welcome to the last three cities in the
WxChallenge Forecasting Contest, hosted by the University of Oklahoma.
The forecasting contest includes participants nationwide who are
meteorology students, professors, or professionals. The gist of
the contest is to focus on one city for two weeks, forecasting daily
four times each week for high temperature, low temperature, maximum
sustained wind speed, and precipitation total amount (liquid
equivalent). In the Meteo 410 Certificate of Weather Forecasting
class, our assignments were to choose a lesson learned for each week of
each forecasting city and write it into our ePortfolio. We began
with Orlando, FL and Fresno, CA, which constituted the second ePortfolio
assignment.
For our third ePortfolio assignment, we
continued the task of choosing a Lesson Learned from each forecast week,
two per city, and elaborate on what we learned and how it affects our
forecasting technique. The next two weeks focused on Caribou, ME,
and the two weeks after that took us down to Jackson, MS. The
final two weeks were centered in Grand Junction, CO.
Caribou, ME is a city in the most
northeastern part of the state of Maine, almost in Canada. It's
located 150 miles west of the Atlantic at an elevation of 625 ft., and
enjoys the large temperature gradients and precipitation of low pressure
systems moving from the Great Lakes and Canada. Our challenges for
these two weeks had to do with persistent cloud cover, winds,
precipitation, and the timing of frontal boundary arrivals. Clouds moving in
quicker than anticipated ahead of a front and persistent clouds after
the passage of a low pressure system turned out to be the bolts in the
carburetor, providing fodder for both lessons learned.
Jackson, MS lies in the warm, humid
southeastern Gulf states, where mid latitude storm systems still have a
chance to pack a punch into winter, with severe possibilities and large temperature
gradients accompanying frontal boundaries. It lies 45 miles east
of the Mississippi River, and 150 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico,
which almost constantly feeds moisture into the area on southeast winds.
It's elevation is at 291 ft. in low hills.
The timing of frontal boundaries and their subsequent cloud cover and
precipitation proved to be one of our lessons learned for this city, the
other being a reminder of the role the dry slot plays in a classic
mid-latitude cyclone.
Grand Junction, CO is located in the Grand
Valley high desert at 4,800 ft above sea level. It's surrounded by
mountains and is subject to valley breezes. However, for our first forecasting period, a
potent Arctic air mass with record snows came through and cast all the
norms to the winds. And those winds proved to be one of our
biggest challenges for this city - down-valley winds and temperature
inversions. However, the effects of a strong arctic cold front
behind a high-precipitation polar cold front proved to be the catalyst
for our lesson learned. MOS could not foresee the snowpack of
record proportions nor how it would keep the temperatures so frigid.
Click on the city name below for an
elaboration on each of the
Lessons Learned complete with backup graphics. In addition, I've
added a section for synoptic-scale reflections, meaning reflections on
the course as a whole. A little weather humor there. :D
Caribou ME - KCAR
Jackson MS - KJAN
Grand Junction CO - KGJT
Reflections
Debbie Jarvis-Ferguson
Meteo 410
ePortfolio Assignment #3
December 17, 2006
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