The motion of cold fronts through the high plains is often too slow. This is a problem common to the operational models. Some upslope precipitation events have been underpredicted by the model. This may be due to inadequate initial moisture fields provided by the coarse early-eta grids or perhaps due to inadequate vertical resolution. Weakly-forced convection can be poorly forecast.
Minimum temperatures are too warm, particularly over the plains when winds are present.
The model fails to produce an adequate inversion in these cases, so the model winds never die down. CAPE forecasts seem much too low, for unknown reasons. As time permits we will be testing improved soil moisture initializations and cumulus parameterization schemes.