In addressing reporting problems from a couple of users, I’ve run across two issues that are worth checking on. One is that it’s not been clear to many people that, to use the relatively new euromix output (mixed GFS and ECMWF data), you will likely need to change the name of the file to import into WXSIM. In the past, I’d generally set users up with wdata.txt as the default export file from WXSIMATE, and as the file to import (under Import/Import Data, accessible once you temporarily disable auto run). With euromix.exe, though, it has to ingest one file name and output another. My default now is to continue with wdata.txt as the output from WXSIMATE, but then have euromix import that and output wdatamixed.txt, when then becomes the name of the file you should be ingesting into WXSIM. I’ve seen in mutiple users’ iitialization files that they (understandably) didn’t get the message to change the name in WXSIM form wdata.txt to wdatamixed.txt. The result would not necessariyl be “bad” forecasts, but it would fail to take advantage of the improvement available with the new, ECMWF “enriched” data.
The other problem involves RAOB data, and the symptom reported (from one, maybe two users) was anomalously high wind gusts (like 30 mph with 6 mph average wind speeds), and possibly some odd temperatures or storm likelihoods, probably only in the first few hours of the forcast. For at least one user, I traced this to very bad TTAA RAOB data, seemingly from another time of year, as it reflected winter-like temperatures in summer. This produced very unstable conditions for a few hours until the GFS/ECMWF data could “take over”.
I have not yet figured out how such data got imported (or posted online in the first place). Possibly one of our data sources has stopped (I haven’t checked yet). I’ll investigate this, but if you’re seeing odd behavior, a good thing to try is to simply UNcheck RAOB data for import in WXSIM. This will have only slight (probably undetectable) detriment to the forecast, but would protect against “crazy” behavior.
I’d be interested in any feedback you may have. I do think it’s fixable for now by simply unchecking RAOB.
Thanks!
Tom
