Thermal predictions
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I am a glider pilot and feel that your thermic prediction look rather optimistic for the UK. Are you predicting the cloud tops rather than the useable thermic height?
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@skysailor Hi, thank you for the feedback! Could you please provide more specific data? Which place/date and how big is the difference?
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@tz Experience from today Sunday 30th May 2021 at Lasham airfield near Basingstoke UK. Your forecast at 12:00 UTC was 4900ft with a temperature of 17 degrees C, rising to 5300ft at 15:00 UTC. Actual at 12:00 UTC was 2000ft at a temperature of 17 degrees C. By 15:00 UTC the thermic height was 2500ft rising to 4000ft by 16:30 UTC. Trust this helps.
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@skysailor Thank you for very detailed feedback. We will look at it. One more question - do you use ECMWF or ICON?
About evaluation: we can easily compare forecast of cumuli with satellite imagery. Height of thermals is more complicated. We will probably use igc files or soundings. -
@tz I use ECMWF. The heights that I gave previously were all QFE (AGL) at Lasham.
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@skysailor Ok, heights forecast by Windy are AMSL, but it should not make such difference - Lasham/UK is 570ft.
