Main event is Friday / Saturday. Tomorrow will be a dusting in the village. Sorry for prediction in obs.
EC has does pretty well with today's falls IMO. And TBH fall rates and duration for Friday look not too dissimilar to today. The denominator between today and Friday is the back end is significantly colder.
BOM have a big increase* in the likely precip for Friday - coincides with the next front (which is much more southerly and colder as you've pointed out) crossing the alps. GFS has a lot of the moisture missing the alps and hitting the ACT though, similar to today (over 18mm at Mt Ginini and still falling). Should be a better result than today for Thredbo at village level I think. * Noting that I last checked today's forecast (Thredbo top station) a couple of days ago when it was ~20mm, not sure if it changed.
Dunno about a big increase for BOM (MetEye) I seldom ref it. EC Ensembles (BoM precip reference) for Friday 10am to Sat 10am. Pretty similar to today 10am-10am tomorrow IMO.
You're right, I looked a couple of pages back and a couple of days ago BOM / EC boosted the precip forecast for today to something similar to the current forecast for Saturday. Still got another ~11 hours of precip for "today" as well given the 9am reset...
I predict that people will continue to post "fizzer" ~6 hours into a four-day system from now until eternity... or at least until the admins are too old to keep running in the hamster wheel that powers the ski.com.au servers...
This criticism of a few fizzer comments - one being mine - is simply blind to the reality of what was forecast to this point vs what has transpired. Wicked Wednesday didn’t really do what a whole lot of models were suggesting. It’s not a big deal, and there are a few days left, but to say “it was always going to be this way” (a ski.com.au favourite comment when we are suddenly bestowed with hindsight) is simply blind to the reality of what we were expecting beforehand. Hopefully Friday comes good!
Latest GFS run has more moisture for the Central Tablelands and has snow back on the cards for the Southern Highlands. Shows 24 hours of snow for Crookwell, that can't happen too often!
Not a fizzer but certainly didn't meet everyone's expectations for what we assumed would have fallen by now, especially in Thredbo (Perisher seem to have done slightly better). I guess this is only the first part of a 2 part event, albeit only 5-10cm of a forecast 25+ transpired. Tomorrow will be fairly dry up until lunch time I think, then snow showers after that. BOM seem to be way overestimating rainfall totals recently in the thredbo/perisher forecasts. An upgrade to 20-60mm this morning definitely wasn't justified
Key point is that 'wednesday' hasn't finished yet - that forecast is for up until 10am tomorrow morning. That's the time to call a fizzer for Wednesday.
YerNah. The range of falls for wednesday (10-10 for the sake of hindsight plots) put anywhere from 20-30mm (EC and OCF) to 40mm (on GFS) to 60-80mm (CMC and AXS). That’s quite a spread. BOM even went outside of the box and upped precip to a range of 20-60mm on this morning’s bulletin - it’s not often they do that. So when numbers and froth are thrown around you really do have to pick your battles when it comes to ‘expectations’. I’ll be the first to admit progs got it wrong on wind strength this arvo, which added to weird persistent rain at 1350m and lack-lustre fall rates between midday and 3pm today (not even EC got a look in there). But, with 10 hours to go in the prog window and the Perisher stake 5cm off the lower end of the range, I am not sure expectations were in check TBH.
Sorry but BOM had no choice but to upgrade. There was more than a handful of indicators/models that suggested moisture possibly exceeding the upper scale of 35mm in the forecast last night. SA totals look to over-verified overnight (yesterday’s totals) too.
Cheers nfip, I think I’ve read That Guthega in particular does well when there’s a strong NW wind load. It’s the closest to the main range so makes sense I guess? More slopes exposed to the North and west too?
Have a look at the "Rainfall and River Conditions" tab for NSW. In the snowys region the rainfall totals to 9am range from 2mm (Cabrumurra - likely a busted gauge) and 47mm (Tooma Dam). The stated range seems correct to me.
12z looks to be another upgrade across the models. The core of the low is better placed. Further west*
So far this has played out almost exactly how BOM have forecast. I think everyone needs to remember that the BOM forecast precipitation isn't a range. The lower number represents a 50% chance of atleast that amount of rain falling and the higher number represents a 25% chance of that amount of rain falling. Perishers Wednesday forecast was 20 to 60mm, so there was a 50% chance of 20mm falling (which has now occurred). http://www.bom.gov.au/NexGenFWS/rainfall-faq.shtml
I disagree. This will be my last post on this topic. I understand what the BOM ranges mean however the day before each respective day they had (for Thredbo): - Tuesday 15-35mm - Wednesday 20-60mm Thredbo’s “storm total” is 15cm up top and there’s a dusting in the village this morning. So it’s below the lower (50%) bound by a reasonable margin.
The village isn't exactly at an Alpine Altitude? I think the specifics need to be considered when looking at Thredbo forecasts, very different up the mountain
IMO most people thought around 40. But hey, its weather, and IMO the modelling has been wack for years now, which means parameters have changed..... Just going off the radar, my money would have been on 30-40.
Which is why I quoted the total on the mountain... Agree with telecrag. Just seems to be plenty of hindsight bias with this one for some strange reason
Perisher Marketing Dept. peddling like never before claiming "with up to another 95cm in the forecast", in their report today, which is laughable.
Why not just wait until the whole system has passed. Then form your opinions.Only takes just one microburst over the alps to bust models. At any given time with the unstable polar air that's in the forecast over the whole forecast. Not just today or tomorrow but until the end.
Too many people with too much data and very little idea how to interpret it. Add social media influencer and professional snow business spruikers and we get what we get. Every single system is overhyped and disappoints compared to the hype. Yet we want to believe so when the next one comes along we just repeat the process. One thing i wonder is with smaller model scale (more resolution) they probably pick up peaks over the main range more so than in the past. So the big totals we see on the output overstate what could ever fall in the resorts. 20 years ago if you saw 20cm forecast for perisher valley you'd know there would be 50cm+ out on the higher parts. You'd have to interpret that yourself. Now we see model appears to spit out the 50cm prediction for the main range and we get 20cm at resorts.
Indeed unfortunately some just whinge whinge whinge and whinge over and over. Its just in their nature i guess.
It's perfectly acceptable to discuss model reliability in this weather predictions thread that in essence is an aggregator of every model available to Joe Public(and a few more I can never find bu turn up here) coupled with local wisdom It just so happens 2 forecast dumps in a row haven't delivered to even the lowest predicted ranges That's okay.No doubt it will help modellers in future.More good data in less bad data out. I personally feel the ridging high across Central Australia probably stopped the moisture pushing up as high as it could have-and I have issues about the same feature going forward. I'm in 1770 and it is hot btw but Southerlies are fresh
Maybe BOM could consider providing a separate Main Range Forecast to capture the extreme weather events up top and ease the pressure on the (3) resort forecasts. They sort of do this already with their ‘Severe weather/wind warnings above 1900m. I’m not sure whether internally, BOM would be keen adding to the scope and complexity of alpine forecasts by adding a MR ‘location’ but it might simplify processes for resorts, which would be a Good outcome all round - not the least when stakeholders are disappointed post event?
Tough audience, I predict I will be skiing Sponnars towers on Monday with the crew. http://www.bom.gov.au/nsw/forecasts/thredbo.shtml Using a 10:1 ratio... On the low end of the range .... 54cm On the high end of the range... 108cm How good is that ??? Snap
You'll probably find that the BOM forecasters are not that aware of local factors at play in the mountains. I mean, who travels out of Sydney anymore? and when they do travel its typically not on the ground. People are looking for accuracy that can never exist. The environment is more complicated that mathematical output for a given 10km grid. Snow accumualtion just complicates things a billion times more as where snow settles is a whole other ballgame. Look no further than the argy bargy in here over snow depths at Spencers creek not being representative of anything. Best to get some experience and make your own decisions about likely conditions where you are going.
I think you'll find that precip in the weather station at Perisher yesterday was 20.8mm, which unless I'm mistaken is within the range of 20-60mm? Not being argumentative, but 20.8>20.0 is a kind of irrefutable fact?
Whole thing is probably not helped by the cheap season pass masses reaching its peak between 2017-2019 coinciding with a period of snowfalls meeting if not exceeding forecast expectations. No everyone and their dog expects the upper range to occur everytime it snows. I often wander if the main range problem compared to resorts also applies to Jindy vs the mtns in general. Jindy often has max temps forecast 5C or more below Cooma and signficantly higher precip that is as close to forecasts for the mtns as it is for Cooma. Realistically aside from wind and some periods during the day when active fronts see cold downbursts off the mtns onto Jindy with a drop and temperature and blowy precip of some kind, the rest of the time it is sunny and much closer to the rest of the Monaro like Berridale. Models not able to resolve a location with highly variable topography (being the lowpoint within that) and a significant mass of higher/rainier/snowier ground close by?
Is this good or bad? My intuition is that the wedge of warm air that becomes trapped up high during an occlusion will cause some warm layers and potentially freezing rain. Kinda what happened with last one right (ie the huge icing on the lifts)?
I don’t think temps will be a problem this time around. A bit of occlusion might even hint at a bit more moisture (but I should be careful not to appear too hope-casty as I am apparently completely new to weather and skiing. How good is the internet!!)
Yeah both of those sound right. Wouldnt take the other stuff personally mate. Keep expressing your view, thats what we’re here for! Its the best snow weather forum by a mile
Last system very different in it's origin, path & feed. Wasn't freezing rain though - was simply rime last time around (combo of vapor & ice particles sticking/freezing to objects). You need an inverted temp profile for FZR. Like TB said, 850 temps are better by a country mile here so won't see any ill effects of an occluded front other than increased moisture and potentially convective TROWAL scenarios.
