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Welcome to the RTMA/URMA VLab community!

The purpose of this community is to facilitate feedback and discussion on the RTMA/URMA system. 

Meeting notes are available under the Google Drive Folder linked above.

To learn more about our next upgrade, see the asset publication below.

Use the System Overview to learn more about the system in general.

Use the forum to ask questions about the system and join the discussion with other users and the development team. 

Note that there are two forums: one for precipitation issues and one for all other variables.

You can post to the precip issues forum by sending an email to qpe.rtma.urma.feedback.vlab@noaa.gov.  For all other issues, you can post by sending an email to rtma.feedback.vlab@noaa.gov.  Please note that you must have a user account to post to the forum.  If you do not have an account, please contact matthew.t.morris@noaa.gov.

We recently added the ability for NWS Regional or WFO personnel to request that stations be removed from the analysis.  To access this, click on the "Station Reject Lists and Requests" tab.

There has been recent interest in knowing exact station locations, especially those of METAR sites.  Our METAR information table is under the "METAR Location Info" tab.

Users may also be interested in the National Blend of Models VLab community.

We appreciate any feedback on how this page or community could be improved.  You can submit such feedback via the above email handle or forum.

 

What's New

December 2017 Implementation Summary

Document

Overview of upgrade scheduled for December 2017. Note that this was originally scheduled for October 2017, but has been pushed back due to technical issues.

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Modified Date
10/31/17

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Incorrect RTMA QPE in SE California

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Paul Iniguez, modified 6 Years ago.

Incorrect RTMA QPE in SE California

Youngling Posts: 12 Join Date: 9/20/12 Recent Posts
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Please see the attached graphics which exhibit (very) erroneous QPE in southeast California. We have observed this issue with some frequency. It appears to only show up in the RTMA QPE01 (not shown) and QPE06. The URMA analysis removes it.

-Paul

Paul Iñiguez
Science & Operations Officer, NOAA/NWS Phoenix, AZ
602.275.7002 x224 -  Weather.Gov/Phoenix -  @NWSPhoenix -   Facebook.com/NWSPhoenix

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Anonymous, modified 6 Years ago.

RE: Incorrect RTMA QPE in SE California

Hi Paul,

The precip RTMA is much less accurate than the precip URMA.  The RTMA is made at 33min past the top of the hour with whatever RFC QPEs that are available at that time and the rest is filled with "early Stage II" (from radar DPAs and METAR gauges, which are available at ~30min past the hour), while the URMA is from RFC QPEs and re-made 1/2/3/5/7 days later to catch any corrections/human intervention at the RFCs.  There are no hourly QPEs from NWRFC and CNRFC and the radar-based Stage II analysis, even with the gauge correction from the rather sparse METAR) can be quite poor in these areas.  For example, in the hour ending at 02Z 13 Mar, which falls into one the 6h periods you looked into, the spurious precip at the south end of CA came from the radar KSOX (Santa Ana Mountains), with upwards of 40mm/hr of precip.  The much closer KNKX radar did not have any data available within +/-10min from the top of the hour, so the KSOX coverage remained.  With the terrain and time constraint, the precip RTMA can be quite problematic out west.

Ying

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  • 2011 RTMA Paper (Weather and Forecasting)

    The most recent peer-reviewed paper on the RTMA. Published in Weather and Forecasting in 2011.
    7 Visits

  • Public RTMA/URMA Viewer

    Another viewer of the current RTMA/URMA, with an archive going back 24 hours. This version is open to the public, but does not contain information about the (many) restricted obs used.
    54 Visits

  • RAP downscaling conference preprint (23rd IIPS)

    This link is to a presentation from the (then) RUC group on how the downscaling process works. Although we now use the RAP, HRRR, and NAM, the logic of the downscaling code is mostly unchanged from this point.
    2 Visits