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Sacramento ETA Model

Notes:

There a several mathematical models that NOAA uses for weather forecasting. ETA is one of them.

The Sacramento NWS station is performing an experiment where they run a very high resolution ETA model over Northern California. Among the outputs of this model is THE most accurate forecast of cloud cover.

The forecast is for 3 hour intervals starting from the model run time out to 36 hours. The forecast predicts which areas will have which kind of clouds during each 3 hour window.

Two caveats about this forecast.

1) It does not predict fog
2) It predicts the location, but not extent of the clouds. Thus we know that the inland valley will have high clouds, but we don’t know if it will be few or overcast.

I have found that when the clouds are thin the model produces patchy results. Thus I would tend to believe that there would be a lot of clouds. Also watching the weather develop will give a clue.