It will be strange when gfs finally gets ditched. I’ve been glaring at its charts since 2000! After years of near-hopeless upgrades finally it’s becoming obsolete.

The end of an era.

The GFS isn't being ditched. What has always happened in the past is that the parallel simply becomes the new operational run - since 2000 there have been several.

I think this current parallel is more than simply a minor tweak, like the ones in the past - it's a more major rebuild called FV3, but AFAIK it will still be called the GFS once the transition happens.

Here's a release from 2016 about the new model.

https://www.noaa.gov/media-release/noaa-to-develop-new-global-weather-model

Can any experts shed any light on what would be better for us downstream? A sharper more explosive development, or less deepening? My instinct says the latter, as deeper cyclogenesis tends to make storms take a more northerly track, which is not what we want, right?

What makes you think it is being ditched?

As I’ve read on here many times ‘get the cold in first’ which in the shorter term appears to be where we’re at.... 

To quote that other often used cliche, it’s good to see ‘a thing of beauty’ popping up now to describe some of the model output!

I wonder whether the deep cold over Europe will affect our weather soon. Will it augment any blocking weather to the East? Presumably the data fed into the models includes actual 2m temps which must be low over snow cover. Surely the deeper the cold the harder it is to shift it?

I would assume the new FV3 version will just be renamed "GFS" when it goes live and most people will not notice the difference?

Rob, my analysis from runs which delivered and those that did not, was actually the opposite.

On those runs where the storm deepened more, it tended to slow and curve more northward, missing the jet stream like a slower, heavier surfer misses the wave and the low then dawdled near or over Greenland allowing our Atlantic high to ridge strongly northward, and keep amore mid Atlantic position allowing the previous low to drop into Europe and ...you know the rest.

ICON is persisting in keeping it a flatter, shallower, faster feature, for example.

The US forecasters are really struggling with the precipitation type forecasts because the track is so difficult. Fact is, its not even emerged over the Sierra Nevada yet were its dropping several feet of snow. 

Jeff 

Aye - think some people have misunderstood what the model rollout is.  Theres a GFSP every year isnt there?  Just seems like this year is a major roll out?  The GFSP is just the BETA version until the gremlins get ironed out.  One after UAT.

No different to Android or IOS updates

The snow row is best avoided really. For example on the whole of the chart the highest it gets for London is 22 - for today!

Not an expert, but...

Ideally we're looking for a more amplified pattern upstream (anything to avoid the Azrores high folding eastward towards us and allowing that dome of warmer uppers a route east). A more NE track on that storm would encourage WAA west of Greenland and draw the Azores high north rather than toward us (which in turn aids in the displacement of the Icelandic low). There is a route to cold that doesn't demand extensive WAA (e.g. GFS 6z), but what we don't want is that storm heading out on a more southerly maritime track then heading due east.

That's my reading of it anyway...

e.g. P15 from the 6z illustrates the "worse" scenario

which gives us...

P01 - a "better" scenario (not a huge difference from P15, but it is different on that storm, and it's enough):

Quite.

It'll still swing as wildly as the ballsack of a jogging buffalo.

Im hoping with a bit of time us NW'ers might get a bit of blue.  Its been over 20 yrs since i last saw snow of 6"or more fall in my neck of the woods.

Will this be our year?

Showoff

Extremely excited for the 12z runs. 

I must confess I was told off by a friend who reads this forum (doesn't post) that I was quick off the mark saying these runs were the most important of the winter; he said we need to see where the US storm is going first. He is quite right!

But this is a crucial set none the less. I will be looking for ICON and Para to come on board with further improvements in the ECM evolution.

That's irritating.