The rain that fell over central Iowa on Wednesday was largely unforecasted by the main weather forecast models run in the US. The featured chart displays grid point output from the GFS model for Ames. This model is run four times per day and for this analysis produces a precipitation forecast at three hour intervals. The top row of data is actual observations from the Ames Airport and the grid below represents the forecasts made from each successive model run. Ames picked up over 0.6 inches with some very isolated values over an inch for Central Iowa. It is interesting to see an event missed like this and provides confirmation that there is still room for humans in the weather forecasting process!

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Tags:   model