Current Deep Thunder Forecast for the New York State Thruway
Total Precipitation at 4 km between Data Points
Description
This page contains an animation that is a visualization of the Deep
Thunder forecast focused on the New York State Thruway.
It uses data from the intermediate nest at 4 km resolution. Each time
step corresponds to one hour of forecast time. The specific
data and representation shown are for potential use for operations and
maintenance of highways. In this case, there are maps of the
New York State Thruway, which is color contoured by forecasted total precipitation,
accumulated through the 24 hour model run, following the legend at the
upper right. The map is accompanied by a number of overlays,
including coastlines in black, state and national boundaries in white,
county boundaries in light gray, and cities either by their center or by
airport locations in black. On colder days,
a thick light blue line will mark the location of the freezing point of
water.
The background of the map shows color contour bands of precipitation
(as rain in inches), where brown implies no rain (dry) and heavier rainfall
is in darker shades of blue. If the model predicts no precipitation
then a similar visualization of humidity will be shown instead. If
areas where precipitation is forecasted are sufficiently cold, then they
may be marked with large or small Xs for snow. The smaller markers
imply light snow or flurries. In animation, areas of precipitation
will appear to "paint" the surface blue. However, the model calculations
require some time to "spin-up" the microphysics to enable precipitation.
Therefore, there will typically be no precipitation in the first couple
of hours of model results.
Since the precipitation is accumulated through the model run, regions which stop
showing changes in color imply that the precipitation has ended. In some cases
when that happens and the temperature is sufficiently cold, snow markers may appear.
This implies that wet surfaces may be beginning to freeze.
Instructions
The animation on this page is composed of a set of individual JPEG images
with one hour of forecast time between each frame. Depending
on your connection speed and that of your computer, the animation may take
a few minutes to load and decompress in your browser. When
it is completed, the animation will play. There are VCR-like
controls under the animation to enable you to stop playback, play forward
or backward, or step through the frames one at a time, control the speed
of playback, etc. If you are having problems viewing or interacting
with this animation, make sure your browser has Javascript enabled.
If the forecast information presented on this page does not seem to
be current and you have visited this site recently, the results of the
previous visit may have been saved in your web browser's cache. If so,
you should change your cache settings (e.g., File->Preferences->Advanced->Cache
in Netscape and set the document comparison to "Every time"). When you
restart your browser, the problem should be solved. For your current session,
you should manually clear the cache and reload the page.
More Visualizations of the
Current Forecast
Learn More about These Forecasts
Recent High-Resolution Local
Satellite Observations
Learn
More about Deep Thunder
Learn
More about how Deep Thunder Visualizes the Data Generated by the
Weather Model
Current Weather
Information and Predictions for New York City (from the National Weather
Service)
Current Model Results from the
National Weather Service
Recent High-Resolution Local Radar Observations
Evaluation of Recent Forecasts
