Canadian Weather forecasts for climbing

[bedellympian]

For those who have been up there a bunch, what do you prefer and find most reliable for given areas? Environment Canada doesn't seem to have the ever-helpful point forecast that NOAA does (or maybe I'm missing something?). Been checking multiple sites but having trouble pin-pointing data specifcally for higher elevations.

 

Thanks,

 

Sam

[JasonG]

There is no good source for Canadian mountain forecasts.

 

The locals in Canmore use Mountain Forecast, but I don't have any faith in the site based on my experience.

[Ponzini]

Actually Environment Canada has a very useful service known as "weather one-on-one". You call a meteorologist and have a discussion with them on whatever you'd like to know about. It's $3 per minute and I have found it very useful in the past. They have been able to give accurate forecasts by climbing region, eg. Robson, Bugs, Adamants etc. Link below.

 

https://www.ec.gc.ca/meteo-weather/default.asp?lang=En&n=92CD8DE8-1

[JasonG]

Interesting, thanks for that.

 

Also, forgot about this generalized site for Canadian mountain weather: http://www.avalanche.ca/weather

 

Still the online Wx resources in Canada are quite limited compared to what we are used to stateside.

 

The UW website in particular for PNW weather. Thanks Dr. Mass!

[psathyrella]

windguru lets you compare three models: 27km GFS, 4km HRW, and 12km NAM. They also do a sane, documented, high resolution altitude extrapolation.

 

The site is ostensibly for wind surfers and their ilk, but with a ($20/year) paid account you can add your own custom spots (for example pigeon-howser col in the link above). But you don't need a paid account to view everybody's spots, so the more of us that join and add mountain-oriented spots, the more useful it becomes. Also, the dude that runs it is responsive and actively developing.

 

mountain-forecast.com seems to pretty much be garbage. Probably the easiest way to see this is to watch how frequently they'll tell you a clear day above 2000m has a difference of only a couple degrees between the high and the low. They also don't seem to have any documentation as to what model they're using and what adjustments they make, which doesn't improve confidence.

 

The best single model hereabouts is probably the uw wrf, which (depending on the resolution) does extend as far as the columbia mountains, but their public interface is comically unusable. It would be easy to code up a more digestible version, but their funders require them to not make anything except those crazy gifs publicly available. Which seems a little weird given that pretty much all of the listed funders are public agencies, sigh.