Cherry Grove Friday Jun 12 Ugh
Moderator: defalkner
Cherry Grove Friday Jun 12 Ugh
In looking at the weather last night, it looked like we might have a chance at doing some observing at Cherry Grove tonight (Friday). Alas, it doesn’t look good now. So, there will be no training tonight. However, if anyone does go down to try, remember not to drive on the observing field. We don’t want any ruts in the soft field.
Re: Cherry Grove Friday Jun 12 Ugh
Who are you going to believe? If you look at Clear Sky Clock for tonight Saturday, Cherry Grove is not great but you might be able to do some observing. However, if you look at Weather Underground, 50-70% cloud cover. And with www.weather.unisys.com you see very extensive clouds. Remember the Clear Sky Clock forecast is based on data more than 15 hours old.
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Dave Venne
- Posts: 1932
- Joined: Sat Jul 03, 2004 4:33 pm
- Real Name: Dave Venne
Re: Cherry Grove Friday Jun 12 Ugh
It was really ugh. The clouds ended a trip to Stacy for imaging and kept the "new equipment curse" thread alive.
I rely mainly on the CSC because it's possible to inspect the hourly forecast maps and see what it's getting right (and wrong) at a given time. If the CSC is forecasting that it's going to get cloudy later I'll compare the clouds' progress with satellite images. Yesterday it was evident by mid day that the real clouds were outpacing the CSC's. Taking that into account suggested that the evening was going to be lost.
The CSC was correctly forecasting that clouds would move in, but it had them coming in later than they eventually did: Its timing was off. Years of trying to make sense of the many weather services' outputs have led me to the conclusion that the main culprit in busted evenings is the timing of cloud boundaries. That's one reason you'll see disagreement between the CSC, NWS, and Weather Underground--they all may be getting the timing a little different.
I rely mainly on the CSC because it's possible to inspect the hourly forecast maps and see what it's getting right (and wrong) at a given time. If the CSC is forecasting that it's going to get cloudy later I'll compare the clouds' progress with satellite images. Yesterday it was evident by mid day that the real clouds were outpacing the CSC's. Taking that into account suggested that the evening was going to be lost.
The CSC was correctly forecasting that clouds would move in, but it had them coming in later than they eventually did: Its timing was off. Years of trying to make sense of the many weather services' outputs have led me to the conclusion that the main culprit in busted evenings is the timing of cloud boundaries. That's one reason you'll see disagreement between the CSC, NWS, and Weather Underground--they all may be getting the timing a little different.