What is a PDS tornado watch?

I hear ya! Numerical weather prediction has improved greatly since my college days but still has a long way to go. The models have improved greatly for the global circulation. A improvements are always needed for the smaller scales. In time things will continue to improve with faster computers and more dense observations.

 

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I'm glad you qualified "dense" as observations and not as TV Weather reporters.

 

A friend who worked on weather models back in the 80s said they had problems with convective feedback that effectively caused storms to "blink" in and out of existence in successive timesteps. I'm guessing they've made improvements there, but simulating thunderstorm cells is going to be hard for a very long time -- there's important stuff that happens on a very fine scale, and there aren't any prospects of sampling finely enough to model it well. At least, I don't want my sky full of thousands of weather drones 24/7...

 

Don't get me started on the TV weather guys. Sometimes I just want to throw things at the TV. Fortunately, I hadn't finished my drink yet.

 

We lost our best TV weather guy a couple of years back. He apparently had personal (and interpersonal?) problems that the station just couldn't put up with any more. A real shame; he knew his stuff, and was an excellent communicator.

 

Yes, trying to model the interaction between scales is a challenge. Most of the models today are a blend of different scale models; larger grid spacing over the oceans and smaller grid spacing over land. How to blend the two together is important. I was never interested in the numerical modeling side of meteorology although I had some numerical methods classes in grad school. I was more into the observation side with the majority in weather radar.

 

What market are you in? Several classmates went the TV route. One was a fixture in the Quad Cities and another in Indianapolis.

 

Raleigh, NC. It's a medium-large market. Most of the weather team now is pretty young, I think the senior ones are in their 40s, the one guy might be early 50s.