A New Technique for Stratus Forecasting in the San Francisco Bay Area

San Francisco International Airport (SFO), one of the world's busiest airports, experiences frequent delays due to weather, mainly due to morning stratus clouds that spreads from the Pacific Ocean and the Golden Gate Bridge. Meteorologists from the National Weather Service (NWS) in collaboration with the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) have worked on methods to forecast the burn-off time for the stratus clouds, which is important for determining when arriving flights can use visual approaches and land on-time. However, these forecasts are primarily used by pilots; the FAA and NWS forecast is not available until 6:00 am PDT when the stratus may have already formed. The goal is to implement a system to forecast the impacts of airport delays and to relay the information to travelers the night before via television, radio and social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter.