Welcome to the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee (UWM) realtime modeling page.

The UWM realtime system (based on the non-hydrostatic version of the PSU-NCAR model version 5 or MM5) runs once daily (0000 UTC initial time) out to 48 hours on 3 domains: domain1 covers North America and adjacent waters at 54 km grid spacing, domain2 covers most of the Great Lakes at 18 km grid spacing, and domain3 is centered on Lake Michigan and surrounding states at 6 km spacing. The model uses the 0000 UTC AVN model run from NCEP to provide initial conditions (cold start) and lateral boundary conditions throughout the integration. The model is run on a 4 CPU SGI Origin 200. Model physics include the Kain-Fritsch convective parameterizations at 54 and 18 km, simple ice cloud and precipitation processes and the MRF planetary boundary layer coupled with a multi-layer soil model. The realtime system is made possible by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Cooperative Program for Meteorology, Education and Training (COMET).

Objectives

The UWM realtime model is designed as a quasi-operational system. The intent of the system is to provide a test bed for ongoing research into the predictability of mesoscale systems ranging from the Lake breeze and mesoscale convective systems in the warm season to snow bands (Lake effect or cyclone) in the cold season. In addition, the output from the model is provided on this web page as a service to the operational forecast community and other interested persons. However, usage of these products remains entirely at the discretion of the user and the responsibility for decisions made (good or bad) based upon the model forecasts rests entirely with the user.

How do I use this page?

In this page you can find preprocessed meteorological fields for today's forecast. These static images are grouped together for each model domain. If you cannot find the field that you are interested in, go to the interactive page Plot it! to further explore the data.