A quick question to the EC folks. I've taken up flying RC aircraft - great hobby! It's made me more aware of the wind speed forecast by EC, however. And lately, the winds being forecast are out to lunch a bit, in my area at least.

Today's forecast, for example. No mention of winds at all. Yesterday's forecast predicted calm for today as well.

Mainly sunny. High 18. UV index 6 or high.

However, it's currently fairly breezy all over Pictou County, and mainland NS in general.

Pictou Causeway is currently SW22G30
Mt Thom is currently SW19G29
Truro S14G20

Thoughts? Is this breeze temporary, and therefore not worth mentioning? Or has something changed (Harper et al?) at EC, making forecasting tougher? I've noted in the past that anything under 20km/he has been described as light, however today's forecast doesn't even mention 'winds light'.

No mention of wind implies sustained winds are expected to be less than 20 km/h. This is not a new practice though. "Light winds" haven't mentioned in public forecasts for about 10 years. Only winds of 20 km/h or greater are mentioned.

You will sometimes see the forecast saying something like...

"Winds west 20 becoming light after midnight"

Jonathan nailed where I saw the term light being used, as we look for that in forecast. Usually for our use it's winds xx km/hr becoming light in the evening. That term light is important because some of the best flying is under 20km/hr, and we've come to discover that 20 seems the be the cutoff for mentioning winds in forecasts.

But lately the winds being forecast don't seem to match reality. Today is a prime example. It's still quite breezy out, still no wind in the forecast, and I was just curious if this wind is a temporary aberration, or is something in the climate making forecasting more difficult lately?

The winds indeed matched the forecast today, EC stations of Port Hawkesbury, Caribou Point and Debert all had winds below 20 km/h today, the forecast was correct. winds today were light unless all those stations are wrong which i highly doubt.

Not sure what the wind forecast was for here today, but they have been sustained 20-30 and gusting to 40 all day here. Its been really breezy.

Go check the Caribou Point station, and where it's sited. Then get back to us...

No way what it was measuring this afternoon represented the reality away from that sheltered spot. You just have to look at the random wind directions to know that. It was a gusty day for sure.

The Pictou causeway highway cam, at the time of this picture, was measuring 26G31 out of the SW. That's pretty representative of what the winds have been like here since about 11:00

EC's stations aren't the only game in town Jason. Sometimes you have to stick your head out the window, and use some common sense.

Yeah, the marine layer kept winds very light out at Caribou Point this afternoon. That site is sheltered towards the southwest anyway, so you might not get a representative windspeed reading even if winds were offshore. Once you work your way inland where all of the warmer, unstable air was today, it would indeed be more gusty. Depending on the exposure of the location your measuring from, speeds could certainly be over 20km/h on any given day.

I think the logic behind it is that when winds are generally "light", they can be highly variable from place to place... especially here in Nova Scotia because we've got so many hills and bays that make for a multitude of microclimates over just a short distance. It's just a part of EC's forecasting procedure. They offer vague details over a broad forecast region. If they did a site specific forecast, then things might be different. You best bet is to check TWN... they give a site specific forecast, and even offer an hourly forecast of temperature, wind, sky conditions and precip. Take the temp forecast with a grain of salt though, because it's certainly far from perfect.

I sometimes wonder if it is harder to forecast the wind speed than the temp. A general temperature can be forecast for a fairly large area with just a minimal difference depending on location or proximity to water. Wind has much more terrain to deal with, as Jonathan says, with all the hills and bays around to break it or enhance it.

For example, todays 4:00 pm forecast for my area say's "Wind southwest 20 km/h becoming light this evening. Low plus 5.", the highest wind gust here today was N 18 km/h this morning and it is currently calm out there, it has been 10 minutes since I last recorded any wind here.

That's a good point Jonathan. Wind "light" will be mentioned if it is diminishing from 20 km/h or higher. But if it is expected to be less than 20 km/h for the entire period then nothing will be mentioned. If it is expected to start out less than 20 km/h and then increase, it will usually be written as "Wind becoming...".

Yeah Ron, you were in a northerly seabreeze off the Minas Basin all afternoon.

Yes it was a Northerly breeze here most of the day. This morning it is a Southerly flow which has been abit gusty at times, with a high gust of S 63 k around 9:30am.

Just as quickly as the wind came up, it has now dropped back to the mid-teens and low 20's. Interestingly my Vantage Vue picked up the same high gust of 63k at 9:30 as the VP2, only from the SE instead of from the South.

I thought the cloud cover in the MODIS image yesterday was interesting, and wondered how it related to the wind across the region ... (I had a predominantly SW breeze here, up to an ave. 35 km/hr)
http://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/imagery...12111.terra.1km

Another breezy day here in Pictou County. Yet the forecast makes no mention of winds at all. Winds roughly 15-20 gusting to 30 so far today, from Truro all the way to at least Marshy Hope.

The forecast?
Mainly sunny. High 17 except 12 along the Strait. UV index 6 or high. No mention of winds


What's up with the forecast lately, EC?

It just comes down to EC's forecasting technique... nothing new really. They give vague forecasts for broad regions and details like that tend to get lost in the mix. Check TWN's hourly forecast.. I find it to be fairly accurate with winds, and it's site specific.

Rodney already explained this to you, read his posts.

Did the pilot in your radio controlled plane complain again? :D

That little guy? He's in a constant state of terror - I've only been doing this for a couple of years. :P

The winds can be flown in, if you have a heavy enough plane. But if you read a forecast with no mention of wind, grab a light sailplane (for example), then hit the flying field and the winds are gusting to 30 km/hr - that tends to piss me off after it's happened several times.

Today is another day - it's clearly blowing here today. Even if the highway cams are unofficial data, you can clearly use common sense and see that the smoke at the pulp mill is being blown pretty vigorously. But no mention of winds in the forecast.



Check that smoke out - it's not exactly a calm day from a wind perspective. Still a nice day, but calm? No.

Maybe you should be using the FD's for your region if the public EC forecast isn't useful for you.

A forecast with parameters that are incorrect time and time again isn't useful to anyone... :rolleyes:

http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/city/pages/...e.html#detailsf

Issued : 5:00 AM ADT Saturday 16 June 2012

Today
Clearing this morning. Fog patches dissipating this morning. High 20. UV index 7 or high. <-- No mention of any wind at all, so you'd expect near total calm, right?


The reality is


@Caribou Point

@Pictou Causeway winds 27 gusting to 32
@Mt Thom winds 21 gusting to 35

And now, at 1100, even KNOWING that weather stations are reporting winds, the forecasters still get it wrong - why?

Issued : 11:00 AM ADT Saturday 16 June 2012

Today
A mix of sun and cloud. High 20. UV index 7 or high.


I'll continue to note these inaccuracies. It's wrong more often that it's right lately. The winds used to be fairly accurate, but in the past couple of years it's gone to hell. Lack of funding?

It is rather annoying sometimes; especially if you need lighter winds to do something and you can't depend on the forecast to tell you that. Today would not be a good day for flying a kite here, for instance, because despite no mention of winds in the forecast today there is a moderate east breeze blowing that is gusting in the 30 to 40 km/h range at times.
Now, at least here the marine forecast is indicating a northeast wind of 10 to 15 knots which is consistent with the winds I'm observing today with a bit more gustiness. I see the marine forecast for Northumberland Strait is calling for light winds; so no help there for you either.
In general, I find the forecasts from almost all the places you can get one are always under-forecasting wind speeds.
For instance:
Environment Canada: no mention = light <20 km/h
Weather Network: northeast 15 km/h
Intellicast: northeast 5 to 10 mph (8 to 16 km/h)
Accuweather: east-northeast 11 to 16 km/h

None of these four forecasts for my area is accurately reflecting the wind speed. So, I wouldn't say it is a problem specific to Environment Canada, but perhaps a symptom of the over-reliance on the computer model outputs which I am sure the other three forecasts are spit out from.

As always, I am no expert on these things and perhaps someone can enlighten us more on why this happens on a regular basis.

I'm sure 90% of backyards have winds of 20 km/h or less which don't get forecasted in the public forecasts ie: at chris's new glasgow home station. for your flying you should be looking at the FD's, not surface winds in a public forecast.

I'll weigh-in a bit here. For light RC aircraft, the wind sensitivities are much more sensitive than for larger aircraft or other considerations - maybe like wind load for those towers on Fitzpatricks Mtn. Where you need fine detail across wind thresholds you are certainly not going to find in the regular area-based forecasts. E.g. I figure for your activity, 10, 15, 20 and 25 km/h covers a large range of degrees of manueverability (?).

The forecasting we do is (relatively) big picture - thus coarse wind categories are all that is possible in the time a meteorologist has to spend on a given forecast county/or often group of counties for 3 different provinces. (typically set as "light", "20", "20G40", "30G50", 40G60" km/h and so on). Therefore the details will not often be represented in the regular public text forecast. Computer output of wind averaged over an area can come out to 16 km which in the default 'text-generator software' may come out as "light wind" - or if lasting for more than ~8 hours - not explicitly stated in official forecast based on our standard wording procedures. Remember Dave, the absence of wind in the public forecast text does not mean a forecast for CALM ... it really means <20 km/h. Personally, I'd prefer our wording rules to be set as always stating something about the wind - even if it is "less than 20 km/h". But I don't set the rules ;-) ... I just try to influence them when they are 'set' or 'established'.

But the ability to forecast winds for the area or field you do your RC'ing is certainly possible if one were concentrating on the topography and vegetation of the specific area - Middle Rv part of Pictou Co. in your case. But that level of detail that you would need for accurate planning is a luxury for sure. If you fire-off a note to us on the board here though, we might see it and be able to give you a bit better idea on any given day. If a met. were doing a thorough job of it, they'd probably start with a time series graph from model output at or near your location, then modify that graph given knowledge about computer deficiencies, etc.

Hope that helps put it all into context.

Chris

You're sure, are you, all the way up there? You'd be wrong - again. It was gusting to 20-30+ all over Pictou County on Saturday. The winds - at surface were gusting to 30+ yesterday - all day long and everywhere we went that was exposed to the north or east.

Do you have a link to these magical FD forecasts?

Thanks for the feedback, Chris. I'd certainly like to see the winds taken a bit more seriously. Right now, the low end of the scale is too blurred, IMO. Take it from me, Chris, it was blowing to 30+ yesterday, so it's damned frustrating to yet again look out the window and see poplar trees bowing over in the wind - yet no mention of any wind at all in the forecast. It's been this way for quite some time

Maybe stick a bug in someone's ear, that the low end of the winds scale needs some attention. If no mention of wind at all, most reasonable people would expect no wind at all. If winds are under 20, say winds light. It's just common sense - right? We weather enthusiasts know about the less than 20 = light rule of thumb, but does the general public?

But yesterday EC 'blew it' (sorry for the pun). It was breezy all over northern NS and beyond yesterday. And no mention at all of wind. Something is broken.

Formal logging of complaints is much better done through these methods:
Weather.INFO.Meteo@ec.gc.ca

The public/users can see http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/mainmenu/contact_us_e.html for contact information (NIRT) and the web form.

Chris

I also had top average windspeeds of 30 km/hr (NNE) here yesterday, and was looking for wind in the forecast because we wanted to do a little bonfire last night.
The wind died down at dusk, and we did have a fire, but it was still pretty gusty sometimes.

I'm way ahead of you, Chris. I bring it up here to DISCUSS with the rest of the membership. Some are seeing what I'm seeing, it turns out.

Here's their response, from May 17. Basically boilerplate - changes nothing - the forecasts are inaccurate on a regular basis. And it's not just here in this river valley. It's province-wide....

We've pretty much beat this one ... you've got my information on the factors at play and the official response from my colleagues. That's about all I can personally do for ya Dave.

Cheers,
Chris

That's fine, Chris. You can still participate as someone who experiences weather, though. ;)

I'm just not satisfied with the response from EC. I tried again subsequently, but no response. I keep bringing it up here to see what the other members are experiencing, and I'm seeing similar instances of the winds being forecasted inaccurately.

It's worth discussion, especially when the weather is stable like it is. If I wasn't here beefing, this place would be dead ;)

Don't forget that the 'response from EC' is more than what you received via the online submission. I am with EC. LOL. Is my response here Saturday night of any enlightenment?

Chris

I applaud you Dave for trying to spice things up during this difficult time. :)

I thought the response from EC was pretty good. At least in part they are saying that sometimes they don't know what it is going to do, and in part that they don't have enough money to take the time to improve it. An honest self-assessment I would say.

You know what I'm talking about, Chris. Of course I know you're with EC - you're not alone here, either. My point to you was you can still participate as someone who enjoys the weather, but might not be able to be as forthcoming as they would like, as you work for 'the man'. ;)

I appreciate the response from EC, either from the folks here or the feedback from the official channel.