State-of-the-art soaring forecasts

For those who missed the announcement I made last year, high
resolution -- 1.3 to 12 km -- soaring weather forecasts can be
produced for your region if you have a motivated/capable volunteer to
run the (free) RASP program I have created. This is much finer
resolution than is available from the US RUC/NAM/GFS models and hence
includes the weather influence of smaller scale terrain. This high
resolution is _not_ obtained by interpolation of RUC/NAM/GFS forecasts
but by solving the fundamental "equations of motion" (the same ones
used by RUC/NAM/GFS) and hence provides state-of-the-art forecasts.
How can this be done when RUC/NAM/GFS forecasts require a
supercomputer? The forecasts cover a much smaller region and do not
extend so far in time and so are do-able on a fast CPU PC, though the
region covered and resolution obtainable does depend upon the
available computer power.

Currently RASP is being run for over 20 regions around the world.
While its primary emphasis is upon thermal BLIPMAP forecasts, the
model also predicts mt. wave (unlike RUC/NAM BLIPMAPs) and has been
successfully used by Hawaiian pilots to predict wave over Mauna Loa
when no cloud markers were present. Note that the volunteer must have
access to a fast-CPU Linux PC and have some computer savvy - I provide
written instructions but do not do any handholding for those wanting
to install RASP, though help can be obtained though the RASP forum
from other users. For more information and a list of current RASP
regions see http://www.drjack.info/RASP/

Jack Glendening