Weather forcasts

[Stibb]

Yes, I'm weather map embarrassed so, I'm trying to make things easy by looking at snow/rain and cloud forcast maps from here:
http://www.snow-forecast.com/maps/dynamic/tasmania

I want to find out the likely weather north of lake St Clair which seems simple enough but I just get really confused

Example (note the date and time):

Screen shot 2012-04-17 at 5.31.29 PM.png (320.37 KiB) Viewed 3347 times

Screen shot 2012-04-17 at 5.30.51 PM.png (361.84 KiB) Viewed 3347 times

These maps tell me that there will be no cloud cover but there will be rain... Even the isobars are different...

Please can someone enlighten me

[stepbystep]

Strong Southeasterly wind, water drops out of cloud, lands NW of cloud of course Sorry, bit of dodgy modelling I think.

The top map is showing the freezing point rather than Isobars, rain freezing at 3000m, you'll notice when the freezing point comes down to 1200m, the higher peaks will show snowfall depth rather than rainfall.

[South_Aussie_Hiker]

Regarding the rain/no cloud:

The first picture is the rain for the 6 hours ending at 10am, ie from 4am to 10am.
The other is at 10am.

In my "just woke up" stupor, I assumed your comment about isobars was correct and began rationalising the difference with time due to diurnal pressure variation. The first photo does not show isobars, rather the altitude of the freezing level in metres.

All this is rather academic, because this time of year, particularly in Tasmania, a 6 day forecast is likely to be fairly poor when looking at localised conditions such as cloud cover and rain.

Wait until three or less days to go (preferably two), and if you shoot me a PM I should be able to help you look at the information.

[Stibb]

Lol, SbS, I don't even know if you're serious but I take that as a joke. That just seems too silly!

yeah, doh, I can see that the top is not isobar. I didn't realize it had changed by it self as I changed from snow to cloud overlay.

Ah yes, SAH, that makes more sense! I know it is a bit early but I need to make arrangements and was hoping I would at least have a clue what was going on. We are hoping to leave on Sat arvo/Sun morning so I'll keep an eye on it.

[Azza]

Personally I would take Snow-forecast with a grain of salt..

Its caculated off a world wide model and isn't tailored for our region.

Basically if all the forecast model's are saying the same thing the likelihood of that happening is pretty good.

[Rob A]

We tend to use willyweather up here, then have a look at the BOM site.
I dont know if it will help you but it seems as reasonable and as simplified as anything else Ive come across.

For example;

www.willyweather.com.au/tas/north-weste ... clair.html

[tasadam]

There are a number of weather topics on this forum. Here's the results of a search that may be useful... search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keywords=weather&sf=titleonly

One of my favourite links is here - http://www.meteocentrale.ch/en/weather/ ... eania.html
It's a pity it's flash based, won't work on the iPhone. Dumbest thing Apple ever did is disable flash for iphones. DUMB!!!