A New Technique for Forecasting Stratus 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 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) as well as the Massachusetts Institue of Technology's (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory 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 as well as the FAA; these FAA and NWS forecasts is not available until 13Z when the stratus may have already formed and been present for several hours. This project found a new way to forecast the approximate time period of the stratus burn-off and the delay times corresponding to the burn-off at least twelve hours ahead of the current avaiable forecasting techniques being used by the FAA to initialize the ground delay program.