UW experimental forecast? / Past weather forecasts

A while ago, Amar posted this helpful link to the UW weather forecast. The cloud forecast in particular has been helpful on occasion, but seems to be down now. Does anyone know if this is just a short term thing, or if there is a good substitute?

www.atmos.washington.edu/mm5rt/highresinit.html


separately, i was hoping to track down some old NWS weather forecasts to compare with known actual weather conditions, but the historical forecast data isn't the easiest thing to find. Does anyone have a link? ]Amar, I know you've posted up historical data in the the past, but I was under the impression that you were archiving it yourself.

Anyway, any help would be much appreciated.

Pre-post edit:

Aha! www.atmos.washington.edu/mm5rt/highresinit.html may not be updated any more, as the 1.3 km forecast is no longer "experimental".

Check here instead: www.atmos.washington.edu/mm5rt/rt/gfsinit.d4.html

That work for you?






//Original reply here:

Check out www.atmos.washington.edu/mm5rt/

The WRF-GFS 1-1/3 km forecast is the one you're used to, but the WRF-GFS, MM5-NAM, and WRF-GFS Extended all offer cloud forecasts at different scales. GFS and NAM are somewhat different. If they disagree, the forecast is uncertain, if they agree, the forecast is more certain.

I was just looking at the 4km cloud forecast a few moments ago; it works.

Click the "Past Runs" links to get access to older forecast model runs.

Also useful is the grey dialog within the forecast loop window labelled "D(model)/D(t) Valid:" . Click it. You then get to see the run-to-run evolution of the model forecast for a given moment in time. Useful if you're trying to, say, forecast for a 5pm dusk patrol on a weekday evening (Silas) and want to assess the reliability of the forecast..

I believe that Amar does archive the Rainier forecasts himself, but I'm sure NWS does too. Can't find the link right now.

separately, i was hoping to track down some old NWS weather forecasts to compare with known actual weather conditions, but the historical forecast data isn't the easiest thing to find. Does anyone have a link?

weatherspark.com has a way to graphically compare forecast vs actual from 4 different resources including NOAA.  Its a nice feature rich layout/GUI, if you play around enough you can find how to compare data...


weatherspark.com

awesome info, thank you both!

Interesting, if i'm understanding these forecasts correctly, they've got a much more optimistic forecast for Wester Washington tonight and tomorrow than the NWS does.

I think we're going to place our bets on a sunny Saturday/maybe a little more.