Reliable weather forecasts?

[stever]

I’m wondering what you have found to be the most reliable or accurate weather forecast or weather model for the Alpine lakes and north cascades? 
 

I have been looking at the National weather service (linked from mountain project), SpotWX (3.5day NAM) Mountain weather, yr.no, and meteoblue… and they are usually quite different. 

I went to Washington Pass two weeks ago, and they varied widely from 20/30%-60% rain or Tstorms. Sure enough we got rain and hail ahead of schedule. 
 

Now I’m trying to be more conservative this time, I’ve been looking for a weather window for Stuart and want to get closer to perfect conditions… this weekend mountain forecast showed minimal to no rain (best case) whereas Spotwx and Meteoblue showed up to 60% rain and Tstorms. 
 

Can anyone with more experience with this area offer some advice or which weather forecast/model is generally more reliable? I understand that they are never going to be perfect, but I’d like to be more comfortable with the go/no go choice!

 

[JasonG]

Mountain Forecast is garbage, at least in my experience. NWS point forecasts are pretty good usually, esp. if you read the forecast discussion to get a sense for how solid they are feeling.

I pair NWS with UW WRF-GFS 4km grid.  Typically "1 hour precip loop for western WA" and the "column-integrated cloud water".   Those two products are pretty nice to show you the evolution through the day and when to expect clouds and precip.

https://a.atmos.washington.edu/wrfrt/data/timeindep/gfsinit.d3.6hr.html

Of course, they are all all wrong to some degree, and you will win some weekends.....and lose others.  But it is a lot better now than it was 25 years ago!

[Geoff M]

@Kyle M has a great writeup on his blog with some handy links: https://climberkyle.com/2021/11/03/weather-in-the-cascades/

[JasonG]

Sheesh.  I think @Kyle M needs some kids to reduce his focus.

[stever]

On 7/8/2023 at 7:51 PM, JasonG said:

Mountain Forecast is garbage, at least in my experience. NWS point forecasts are pretty good usually, esp. if you read the forecast discussion to get a sense for how solid they are feeling.

I pair NWS with UW WRF-GFS 4km grid.  Typically "1 hour precip loop for western WA" and the "column-integrated cloud water".   Those two products are pretty nice to show you the evolution through the day and when to expect clouds and precip.

https://a.atmos.washington.edu/wrfrt/data/timeindep/gfsinit.d3.6hr.html

Of course, they are all all wrong to some degree, and you will win some weekends.....and lose others.  But it is a lot better now than it was 25 years ago!

Interesting... I have not seen this website before 

[bedellympian]

I also like UW's atmos site but prefer the time-height forecast. Basically any forecast more than three days out is unlikely to be reliable beyond obvious stuff like "it's summer so it will probably stay nice" or "it's been super sunny and there is a lot of cloud building out to sea so it will probably rain at some point".

Here is a link to a previous thread where I gave details on the time-height forecast...

 

[JasonG]

Right, those!  I did try and use them for a bit but got lazy.  Thanks for the reminder.