Hi all.  

1) Jeff Craven mentioned that this conversation is better served in the RTMA discussion.  Where do we go for that? Thanks.

2) Responding to Paul's question...why should that grid box match the asos?  I totally understand your point.  The asos is on the corner of the box, and there is a lot of diverse features in the box.  I think we all would agree that there are temperature variations in that box (though we would disagree as to how big those variations are because no one really knows).  I think the issue however is that this cannot explain why the URMA box does not match the ASOS.  If we can make a model that resolves all those little features, then I can accept that explanation, but that is not the case here.  As a result, if the ASOS is the only observation point, and the ASOS is about as good as we get in terms of quality, I would think we would want what we are calling our ground truth grid (URMA) to be pretty close to that value. Instead, we are putting more stock in the background model (HRRR I think) in telling us the truth than a top of the line $100,000+ weather station.  That would put into question why would even still use weather stations at all.

Thanks everyone for the discussion. It has been very interesting. If nothing else this has shown me that there is still a lot of diverse thoughts on URMA and what we see as truth as an agency.