Really not a bad day today although best towards the east. It’s a dry, unstable, but well-capped airmass, so with plenty of strong sun on the ground there will be some strong climbs around.

Flying winds will be 15-20kt, lighter in the west, but here the dewpoint will be higher with the westerly wind coming straight off the sea. So in the west a fair amount of cloud and well-marked wave, and the chance of some light showers popping off high ground.

Going east, cloud bases rise through 4,500-5,000ft in central areas up to over 5,000ft in southern East Anglia where dewpoints in this quite dry air will be down around 7. Very little chance of showers over here under a good subsidence cap to the boundary layer.

Likely with-wind streeting which will help with legs piushing into that wind.

There’s some cirrus floating around but that should generally scoot around the area with the west being most at risk. Even so, it’ll be thin and wispy so won’t hold things back too much,

Forecast from Glidemet

Saturday

Hopefully I’ll be able to do more forecasts over the next fortnight.

Forecast from Glidemet

Ooo look a post: Saturday

Sea breeze convergence along much of the south coast and north Devon should be reachable, though watch for Bristol Channel air coming into Somerset later in the day.

By the way, thank you to everyone who’s voted in the polls or sent me comments.

Forecast from Glidemet

Thursday

Major one: RASP is going from strength-to-strength. Be sure to visit the homepage to learn about the latest additions to the RASP Viewer. Don’t forget about the Wind Tool either, which is still think is the best thing since sliced bread for hill sites.

Forecast from Glidemet

Some updates

First, the briefing itself.

You can chose up to five options, but try to chose fewer if you can—briefings shouldn’t last forever! On the other hand, I need to cater for everyone—not just those who have sat24.com on their smartphones.

I’ll be doing cross-sections for sure this year, but there’s more than one way of doing them. They can be for just the airfield, or one can make an attempt to “follow” the route, taking into account when and where the gaggles should be going, and what they’ll find there. My housemate found a wonderful old soaring weather book from the 1970s in our library with a section on competition forecasting, which had things like top-down charts of the task with weather symbols and cloud bases etc. pencilled in along the legs, which I rather liked. There were more ideas in there but I can’t remember them now! Will get the book out when I’m back…

RASP charts would be my favourite fields—surface sun and cumulus base, plus probably climb strength. But show those charts for two times, and that’s six charts of detailed information to display. Can people really take all, or even any, of that in? How much would they remember if I asked them again in ten minutes?

Forecast charts would be blow-ups of maps of temperture or wind from sites such as Wetterzentrale—again, same issues of data-overload.

Personally I’d like to see simpler briefings, with perhaps a synoptic, a sounding, latest sat pics, and then a chat around the cross-section. But tell me what you think.

What should be in the hand-outs? Obviously there’s a limit to what organisers can afford to print, so we’re probably limited to a double-sided sheet of A4 here, and the vote limit is 4 options. Bear in mind that if you want more than two items on the hand-out, they’re going to be A5-sized images.

Here’s a separate poll about what comp forecasters should be talking about—what happened (and why) for yesterday? An outlook for the rest of the competition? Or just the day? You can vote for everything here if you want, but again, think about if you really want all of that.

Finally, there’s probably things that you’d like to see but I’ve not thought of and made an option, so let me know in the comments if there’s anything you’d like added as a poll option.

Forecast from Glidemet

What do you want from competition weather briefings?

Today (Thursday) sees a shield of muck over much of the Midlands and west which is slowly moving away/breaking up, but really all that moisture has done for those parts for the day, and the odd shower will pop up in the southern part of this cloud if the sun reaches the ground. This stuff formed over the seas to south and east and then moved through overnight—Heathrow had an overcast cloud deck at 700ft at one point.

For the rest of the day, we’re looking at an area northest of a line from Swindon to Liverpool moving west at 10kt, in which there should be cumulus to 4,000ft. I still wouldn’t venture far past Cambridge to the east, and watch out for dead areas beneath high-level cirrus. Bits of the southwest, beyond Exeter, should also be usable for local soaring but unlikely much more.

Friday now has a much stronger signal for showers, developing first from the southwest but probably affecting an area up to a line from Liverpool to London by afternoon. That said, they should be scattered and there’ll be soaring around them, but do be careful as there’s a distinct thunder risk, mainly over the Midlands. Further east, good cumulus to 4,000ft, but low and blue around the east coast again.

Saturday looks rather cloudy and showery over the Midlands, and Sunday sees the shower-risk area a bit further west. Central-to-eastern areas should be soarable both days.

Forecast from Glidemet

Thursday