UAlbany system to close forecasting gaps

The new weather monitoring network being installed by the University at Albany may not have helped forecasters predict days in advance the path of the blizzard that skirted the Capital Region Tuesday. But it could have given meteorologists a few hours head start in seeing the storm was changing course — as well as other valuable information currently unavailable from the National Weather Service, officials said.

When the $23.6 million New York State Mesoscale Weather Network — or Mesonet — goes online in 2017, it will supply 125 monitoring sites across the state — one in every county and none more than 20 miles from another. This is compared to the 27 the weather service currently have in place. The new system, UAlbany officials said, will close gaps in forecasting models, collect more information and do it in real time.

“For the current storm, we would get real-time observations,” said Chris Thorncroft, a UAlbany professor and chairman of the Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences Department. “The profiling observations … would feed into the three-, six-, nine-hour forecasts.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo came under criticism in November in touting the system in the wake of the massive Buffalo snowstorm when he said “we didn’t have notice of the snow coming down the way it did, and the information we had was wrong.”

The Nation-

al Weather Service in fact had predicted heavy lake effect snow of potentially “historic” depth.

The federally funded system, which will be linked to the weather service, will feature 30-foot monitoring towers taking readings on temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, air pressure, radiation, and soil information. Among the new surface weather stations, 17 will also take readings for atmospheric “in the vertical” (up to 2 miles), flux (the amount of heat and moisture exchange near the ground) and snow depth. The weather service has only three statewide, and they do not take readings continuously.

The system is being hailed as especially useful in the Adirondacks to predict and report localized flooding — a growing issue in New York state.

“Irene [the devastating 2011 tropical storm that caused widespread flooding] was a serious example,” Thorncroft said. “Forecasters were blind as it was going up the middle of the state.”

Mesonet Project Director Jerald Brotzge, who focuses on radar and storm-scale meteorology, said the stations can get to spots where current radar misses and issue reports in a timely fashion that will aid emergency responders in developing weather situations.

“There are a lot of gaps in the radar coverage, especially in the low terrains,” he said. “This will be able to save lives and properties.”

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