ECMWF vs ICON-EU Wind/Wind Gusts
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Hi guys,
I am located in Bulgaria, Eastern Europe and I mostly rely on ECMWF(mainly for cloud coverage and wind) for the mountain weather forecast. I hike a lot in the winter mountain and often spend the night there at altitude 2500/2900m. I've always felt confident with the ECMWF model because for the past 3 years I've compared the forecast with the actual conditions and never had any major surprises. Recently I was unpleasantly surprised by high winds a few times so I also started checking the Icon-EU. My problem is that very often both models shows a big wind amplitude and I am wondering why is it so. I understand that the Icon Eu is more precise but that still doesn't explain the big difference, at least in my opinion. I may be mistaken so any advice will be appreciated.
This is the forecast for Sunday/Monday this week for the exact same location. You can notice the difference in the Wind/Wind Gusts
ICON EU:
ECMWF:
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@tervelkutsev
In mountain, the high resolution models are generally more accurate. Unfortunately in Windy there is no such a model over Bulgaria. ECMWF model is 9km, and ICON-EU just a bit better with 7km. Then it depends of their orography integrated models.
Have you tried Meteoblue ? This Swiss model is quite good in mountain, but only available in the local forecast table.
The Observation vs forecast feature (select Reported wind or Reported temperature) makes a comparison between a weather station and the model forecast.
Here is an example with Meteoblue.
You can do the same with ECMWF and ICON-EU.
This screenshot shows the Temperature layer, which is a good way to show how a weather model fine-tunes the terrain.
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@idefix37 Appreciate the reply!
I find Meteoblue to be inaccurate for wind and cloud coverage but I check it for temperature. I will try the observation vs forecast feature for sure.
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@tervelkutsev
I understand that Wind is your main concern. Meteoblue is better for wind prediction at this weather station location than ECMWF and ICON-EU. But I did not check at every weather station in mountain. -
@idefix37 I usually compare the forecast with the live data from the cameras in the mountain weather stations - temp and wind and often I see mismatches with all models. Sometimes ECMWF is very accurate, sometimes Icon and sometimes Meteoblue. For example all models today were predicting 85km/h wind gusts top and in reality they reached 110km/h. I know that I want the impossible, after all it is just a prediction. I will consider the data of all models and will have in mind a 20% on top of the predicted wind gusts just in case. Thanks for your help!
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@tervelkutsev said
temp and wind and often I see mismatches with all models.
Remember that medium resolution models cannot be very accurate in mountain for these 2 parameters.
See the grid of a 2km resolution model over a mountainous area:
So with 9 or 7km resolution it is worse.
Meteoblue is supposed to correct the altitude inaccuracy.
