TopMeteo Soaring Weather Now Available for United States Region

Hi Walt,


I have found GFS to be not nearly as accurate as the NAM model in north america, to the point that I never use the GFS with Dr Jack or XC skies. What is your experience with GFS? If topmeteo uses only GFS and the input data is not good as NAM then the resulting output won't be good either. What's your expert opinion on this?

On Thursday, February 25, 2016 at 7:05:19 PM UTC-5, Dave Springford wrote:
Hi Walt,


I have found GFS to be not nearly as accurate as the NAM model in north america, to the point that I never use the GFS with Dr Jack or XC skies. What is your experience with GFS? If topmeteo uses only GFS and the input data is not good as NAM then the resulting output won't be good either. What's your expert opinion on this?

I can't seem to get the US weather only Europe?? I tried re-logging in still no luck??
Glen

Dave,

Since they're running their own regional numerical model only initialized by the GFS, the model parameterized physics and boundary layer will be different. Local higher resolution initialization features from the GFS may not be the same as the NAM. Nonetheless... let's not discount how TopMeteo will perform in the U.S. Let's wait and see.

Walt WX



On Thursday, February 25, 2016 at 4:05:19 PM UTC-8, Dave Springford wrote:
Hi Walt,


I have found GFS to be not nearly as accurate as the NAM model in north america, to the point that I never use the GFS with Dr Jack or XC skies. What is your experience with GFS? If topmeteo uses only GFS and the input data is not good as NAM then the resulting output won't be good either. What's your expert opinion on this?

Gave up on GFS pretty
quickly.

Anyway nothing usable
for glider folk in Alberta
and BC.

The Ontario guys (Dave)
can check out how it
works for them.

XCSkies allow you to
choose between GFS,
NAM and RAP. What's
stopping TOPMETEO?

Gave up on GFS pretty
quickly.

Anyway nothing usable
for glider folk in Alberta
and BC.

The Ontario guys (Dave)
can check out how it
works for them.

XCSkies allow you to
choose between GFS,
NAM and RAP. What's
stopping TOPMETEO?

George Haeh wrote:
Gave up on GFS pretty
quickly.

Anyway nothing usable
for glider folk in Alberta
and BC.

The Ontario guys (Dave)
can check out how it
works for them.

XCSkies allow you to
choose between GFS,
NAM and RAP. What's
stopping TOPMETEO?



Nothing other than that they have their own model.

Peter

I have to give a big thumbs-up to TopMetro. Today in Central VA their forecast was spot on where XC Skies was 1-2k under actual conditions.

Unfortunately I didn't actually stay in the 5.5k thermals

I believe Topmeteo uses limited area WRF with global GFS boundaries, same as pretty much everyone. WRF is far from being state of the art, but it's free and easy to set up. RASP and Topmeteo give basically the same information with different visualizations.

Today is the last day of the Topmeteo free demo trial.

I've been using it from graphics on the web page rather than through SeeYou focusing on my flight area which is the Southern Sierras, Mojave Desert and Central California. My comments up to this point:

* Thermal Height Cloud Base seem pretty comparable to the gfs and nam. There are occasional discrepancies like for tomorrow... Sun 05/01 over the San Joaquin Valley. XCSkies and DrJack cloud bases 10.5k msl... versus TopMeteo 7.5k msl

* Geo referencing is poor. It's using river/aqueducts instead of GoogleMaps or OpenMaps. Would much prefer use of highway, major roads, airspace Class B,C and restricted. It's a definite plus for XCSkies and DrJack with their ability to fade background maps in/out with a javascript slider

* Six day forecasts are a definite plus although XCSkies reaches out to day five with the gfs.

* I like the ability to configure site forecast tables by lat/lon. This give one considerable information on thermal height, strength, cloud bases, top, winds, etc

* The cost of Topmeteo is a bit high at $99 ($109 if you want days 5 and 6) compared to free for DrJack and $40 for XCSkies. Although, SeeYou integration is a big win for TopMeteo.

Overall, it's a toss up in my opinion regarding the value of Topmeteo. If you use the subscription SeeYou, Topmeteo integration is a wise investment for planning flights out to six days. Given the lower cost DrJack and XCSkies, Topmeteo should lower it's cost for U.S. pilots.

One definite plus for Topmeteo is the long term support that extra dollars provide. Jack Glendening is no longer developing DrJack.net... and when he is no longer able to make small updates, that site will likely disappear. Support from XCSkies leaves something to be desired. The service hasn't been updated significantly since around 2010.

Walt Rogers