Toward better forecasts of chinooks at Cold Regions Test Center, Alaska

Chinooks and other regional down-slope winds can quickly change weather conditions in the lee of mountains. At the ranges of the Cold Regions Test Center (CRTC) in Alaska, warming from chinooks can abruptly delay or halt operations. Unfortunately, reliably predicting a chinook's onset, duration, strength, and spatial extent remains a challenge for numerical weather prediction models. This presentation will explore whether improvements in operational forecasts of chinooks at CRTC can be gained by the following techniques: 1) increasing the WRF Model's resolution, 2) finding an optimal combination of physical parameterizations, 3) improving how land cover is represented, or 4) by making the model's drag a function of unresolved variations in terrain elevation.