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Report Submitted by SkierRoger
(trip) Date: Wednesday Jan 31, 2024
Submitted: Wednesday Jan 31, 2024 at 18:18
Discussion:
Here are some temperature & snowfall projections for a number of areas. Looks like a couple more days of warm weather, followed by a cooling trend. Snow too!
The forecasts were pulled from the Spotwx website.
 Source: Spotwx website
5 comment(s) posted
Comments:
2024-01-31 at 23:45 - comment by Diana Piggott
Roger, I love the way you put these graphs together!
I would just like to add that I have looked at some of the Spotwx forecasts, and notice that many are for a rather high elevation, often over 2000m and well above the ski trails. Two notable exceptions to that are West Bragg Creek and Sandy McNabb, which seem to be more useful elevations.
2024-02-01 at 10:33 - comment by Arie
Tomorrow is groundhog day. The forecast is for sunny so Balzac Billy should see his shadow. That means six more weeks of winter. Yay!
2024-02-01 at 12:06 - comment by SkierRoger
Thanks very much for your thoughts, Diana.
Yes, these weather forecasts should definitely be taken with a grain of salt. The 10-day projections consider a rather large area surrounding the coordinate entered and are not so much related to the location itself.
Below is example for the Mount Shark area: 10-day forecasts come from the the large blue area (many square Km in size). If you were to pick a different coordinate anywhere inside that same area, you would get the exact same forecast. Not very detailed...
The smaller green areas appear more precise but they generate only short forecasts (3.5 & 2-day).
I like Arie's idea: just ask the groundhog!
 Example: Mount Shark Area
2024-02-01 at 17:43 - comment by MaSid
Looks like this storm may have some upslope properties with a north wind. Kananaskis public safety team suggest weather models may mean 25 cm of new snow by the end of the weekend (which they usually mean along the spray lakes road and at treeline or above, not the valley bottom cross country areas). Either way, should be enough to cover any crusty ice. Hopefully the existing snow pack has time to freeze before getting insulated by fresh snow. Probably not an issue for groomed trails, but perhaps for off trail travel.
2024-02-03 at 20:12 - comment by TSellers
Apparently, the Amish say they accuracy of their groundhogs for the past 10 years is 40%. That approximates the average accuracy single run GFS and ECMWF models if they are past day 7. That's why long range forecasts need ensemble models.
Garth at SpotWX passed the following interesting comment along to me, "The GFS model elevation at Banff is way up at 6437 ft above sea level (the average elevation across the entire model grid cell), which is higher than the 850 mb / ~5000 ft level.
In the Canadian models when the pressure level is below the model surface elevation, the winds for that pressure level are shown as identical to the 10 meter winds. However I see for the GFS model the winds are actually lower. So you are right they don't match. Why that occurs in the GFS model I'm not sure.
For forecast winds at Banff I'd probably use the HRDPS 1km West model. The 1km resolution should help resolve the intricacies of winds in the mountains. In other models I also look at the winds at 40, 80, 120m above ground, as the 10 meter winds often appear too low."
It seems like lee cyclogenesis has really been making the snowfall forecasting difficult for the ECCC forecasters this year, and from the looks of the radar, this weekend seems like it may turn out to be similar to the last time snow was forecast for K-Country.
 How accurate is my forecast? Interpolating, based on assumptions from looking at this chart, it may depend on which agency is issuing it, and the time from the model run.
 This diagram shows that while long range forecasts have improved a lot in the last decades, it is still hit or miss when you move past days 5 or 7.
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