WRF Model Page

The Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) is a mesoscale numerical weather prediction (NWP) model run at NWS Buffalo four times a day on a 6 km grid spacing over most of the Great Lakes Region. The model runs are available at approximately 30 minutes past the hours of 11 AM, 6 AM, 11 PM, and 6 PM (EST) each day.

Although the output can be used for all types of weather, we concentrate on using the model in nearly steady-state, mesoscale weather events such as lake effect rain and snow. Therefore, the shading and contour intervals of QPF in particular may be very noisy in really wet, synoptic scale storms. In addition, we hope to also use this model for other types of local or mesoscale weather phenomena such as lake breeze initiation and lake breeze thunderstorm activity during the summer.

This research is part of our goal to bring state-of-the-art technology to our users. It must be pointed out that the information provided by the model data is pure model output. Our official forecasts are based on a consensus of several NWS meteorologists at NWS Buffalo, who have reviewed additional numerical models, data sets and other weather information to produce a consensus forecast of the most likely weather that will affect our region. Please send any comments, question or suggestions to the email below.

Domain	Most of the Eastern Great Lakes Region
Grid Spacing	6 Km
Model Duration Time	36 hours
Model Output Time Increment	1-hour time increment
Initialization Fields	12km NAM 3-hour grids
Convective Parameterization Scheme	Grid Scale -- no convective parameterization
Workstation	2.0 Ghz dual processor on LINUX