Weather S01E12: Finding Snow, using WPC Probabilistic Winter Precipitation Guidance
Channel: Mountain Parameters
Date: 2024-01-05

In the previous video we mentioned that once you find an area of interest for winter recreation, you may want to interpolate what may develop at that location by looking at a forecast. There are a number of forecasts that stretch out by weeks, or even months. However, the further away you get from the present, the less accurate they become. And as we saw in the previous video, at the moment, the accuracy of the European and US flagship model runs is proving to be a challenge for forecasters. In this video we take an in-depth look at using a snow forecasting tool from the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center that will take us forward by up to 72 hours and thus offer us a higher degree of confidence in the near term forecast for precipitation.

This tool has a plethora of options for giving substance to a probability forecast for freezing rain and snow accumulation, and covers continental USA as well as the southern areas of Canada. You can fine tune the display to show snowfall accumulations from 1” to greater than 30”.

In this video, we are concerned with the snow, and we will bring you up to speed to facilitate a quick start if the task of getting a quick and reliable snow forecast if this is of interest to you.

To get started:
1. Go to this link: https://origin.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/pwpf/wwd_accum_probs.php?ftype=probabilities&fpd=24&ptype=snow 

Then you can use the video to follow along in order to drill down and choose some of the settings that may be optimal for your particular needs.