We use an Eta vertical coordinate (but can change
it to SIGMA) with 45 vertical levels.
We use the 12-km NCEP Operational Eta tiles for
the lateral boundary conditions to initialize the
model. This means that the model has boundary conditions
available to the west near 135W and east over Nevada.
We use the 0.5 degree High Resolution Sea Surface
Temperature(SST) dataset.
We use the Kain-Fritsch (KF) cumulus (convective)
parameterization (we have the option to use Betts-Miller-Janic
(BMJ) or no scheme).
We run the model hydrostatically at a 10 second
time step.
The model uses a 30-second land-sea mask for high
resolution depiction of lake and coast shorelines.
The model output domain is a 75x121 grid centered
at 39.0N and 121.6W.
The output is available at 3-h forecast increments
to 48-h and is usually available by 0800 (00 UTC run) and
2000 UTC (12 UTC run).
We use a dual 2.0 GHz Linux machine with 2 GB memory
and 60 GB hard drive disk to run the model. - The
model usually runs 4 times a day (00,06,12, and 1800
UTC).
A 1200 UTC model run starts the download of the
boundary conditions at 1345 UTC and completes the
download around 1440 UTC, then the model begins running.
The model usually completes running at 1900 UTC.
Final Web Graphics and AWIPS products from a 1200
UTC run are available near or just after 1930 UTC.
We use GEMPAK 5.6H to create the graphics to post
to the web page.
We would like to thank NWS Burlington for these scripts.
We expect to use the model qualitatively to help refine
phenomena related to terrain such as temperature, winds
and orographically forced precipitation. This model
should give some clues about how complex terrain can
affect local weather in northern California.
www.weather.gov 
