A NOAA funded project in North Florida has been using the WRF model to produce model forecasts at the 5 kilometer (3 mile) scale, using the FSL LAPS model to provide a diabatic hot start to the WRF model which has been shown to improve spin-up and the first 12 hours of forecast performance.

The presentation will discuss the second year of the WRF project including the Year 2 upgrade to WRF version 2 and briefly report the results with examples, including a tropical cyclone case. With continued model development and local tuning, this project lends itself to even higher resolution wind, temperature and rainfall forecasting. The newly developed Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model is capable of delivering such products at scales down to a single kilometer.

Improvements to the boundary layer model and land surface model should bring a substantial improvement to the prognostic fields produced by the model.