How Are Gusty Conditions Forecast?

[estarzinger]

Originally Posted by theway

Ahhh, I’ll dive into this a bit more... I’ve definitely heard of CAPE/Convection being associated with thunderstorms (rain), but not gusty conditions.

Here’s the CAPE for the Sydney area and it shows nothing, but definitely gusty here 17-35kts. Coffs Harbour however shows red (2322j/kg), but wind shows 5-10kts.

There are 4 types of 'gusty' -

one is surface effect - with steady winds aloft but gusts caused by surface unsmoothness and highish surface temperature variation. This is not an issue at sea, where my attention has been focused . . . . but probably is around Sydney.

There are two which are both measured by turbulent energy metrics (as I mentioned in my prior post), and they come in 'wet' or 'dry' gusts (surface convection or not) depending on several further factors. But they both come with cloud development. As an aside, related to one of your comments - thunderstorms are very often (almost always) gusty.

The final is 'clear sky squall', which as indicated has no cloud development. This is relatively rare.

In the later 3 you have to understand the altitude of the gusts - at the surface you might not think it is gusty, but it is in fact (up 1000m). Also, the turbulence can either be spread out over a wide altitude, or compressed into a narrow altitude band. If the later, it will 'feel' more gusty than you might initially guess from the turbulent energy metric.

[estarzinger]

in all the later 3 cases (excluding surface effect), what you are looking at is how 'even' vs 'uneven' the atmospheric energy distribution is; and today that can be measured from satellite (and from the ground).

With surface effect, they can also measure the 'hot spot' impact. My limited understanding is that they simply historically model the surface unevenness effect, but they may be doing something more sophisticated or direct these days. I've just never paid much attention to this component.

[Cadence]

Modern science. Watch the horizon and your barometer.

[roland stockham]

The fundamental thing about gust is they are sudden and LOCAL. Especially in coastal waters so they can be very different either side of a headland, round an island or between bays. This makes reliable prediction next to impossible. Longer gusts (ie squalls!) are better but still hard to predict when and where they will hit

[Juho]

I checked the Finnish Meteorological Institute web site. Couldn't find any gust forecasts, but gust history is available (second picture). The first picture shows temperature and rain with probability estimates for the future (ten days, Utö island). I wonder if they could count similar probability estimates for winds too.