Work Station ETA Information

• 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.

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Tel: (916) 979-3051