Forecast Explorer - BOM Victoria

[Gordon]

After ignoring it out of frustration through lack of updates, I've paid a few visits to this site recently. While I haven't monitored it closely, I did notice that from a couple of days out, it outperformed Water & Land Forecast Rainfall with the rain at the end of last week - particularly in picking the heaviest rain in far north-east Victoria, which Water & Land (and most other models for that matter) missed quite badly.

The updating of this site continues to frustrate - it seems to be an ad hoc process rather than something that occurs at given times each day, and the updates don't match the time stamp. That aside, I'd be really interested to hear what others think of this forecast? It's hardly ever mentioned which isn't a good start I know, but in theory it should have potential?

[Lily]

I have to be honest, Gordon, I don't look at it. I did when it first came out but it didn't seem to reflect what other models were suggesting at the time, and I guess I've "forgotten" about it.

Not sure if others look at it regularly and can comment?

[Gordon]

Thanks Lily, useful to know.

[Karl Lijnders]

Hi Gordon,

The forecast explorer is part of the greater plan at the BoM to develop a grid forecasting system, by where you can literally pin point a forecast down to an area in a 1km block. This in theory is innovative and does hold a lot of potential.

But with this being a natural science, the amount of refining and upgrading into this network and system will mean such a tool will take a long time to come up to speed. While it will never be able to pick rainfall gradients like the one we just had pass through with 200mm in my local area and 40mm down the road, it does give good guideance and the promise in the future of being a good guide for larger scaled events.

Thunderstorm events are always difficult to predict so it is important to refer to mainstream modelling and analysis including observations, radar and sat pic. Real time data, vs prognostics sort of thing.

I hope this helps a bit.

[Gordon]

Thanks Karl. At present I too still go to the models, charts, sat pics etc. first but I'm going to try to keep an eye on Forecast Explorer a bit more often to see if it can repeat its performance last Friday/ Saturday.