An overview of precipitation type forecasting using NAM and SREF data

Precipitation type forecasting continues to provide a major challenge to forecasters. Even when a model successfully predicts the thermal profile, different algorithms can offer different precipitation type solutions.

This presentation will present an overview of precipitation type algorithms and explicit precipitation type-related fields generated in NCEP mesoscale models and examine their biases. It will focus on use of the NAM precipitation type meteograms in which various algorithms are run on the forecasted thermal profiles at various sites.

Results will also be presented on experiments run using members from the Short-Range Ensemble Forecasting system and running multiple precipitation type algorithms on each member to create a "precipitation type superensemble."