MWIS met course write up

[Ben Johnson]

Hi All,

I managed to attend a day with Mountain Weather Information Service yesterday where Gary and Alexi who you may know from the MWIS videos took us through a presentation showing how they arrive at their forecasts in the UK's mountain areas. MWIS aims to put out their forecasts to keep the flip flop and short brigade safe (Gary's words) when in the mountains. Although we need more detailed information to fly our Paragliders safely in the mountains, this surprisingly accurate information source has always had my attention. During lock down I signed up to one of the "days out with MWIS" https://www.mwis.org.uk/information/day-with-mwis and wouldn't you know it, they came to Ratho.

They started with a presentation outlining the steps they take in order to gather the required information to then put a page of information containing different aspects of the weather in each mountain area. These slides contained Airmas detail, fronts, Relative humidity, Due point, Adiabatic, environmental lapse rates, Latent heat, Foehn effect, Stability in the atmosphere, Inversions, Thunderstorms and seasonal weather. 

It became apparent to me the difficulty of trying to cover these topics in any detail in just 6 hours to a wide audience. However, each topic was discussed and I think we all gained knowledge throughout the day. I felt sorry for those who had never seen a skew T / sounding before where I was pushing for more details as this is something we are looking at when we go flying.

Lastly they gave us synoptic charts for each season of the month and an empty box to fill in for each sheet with the kind of information they put out for the British isles. Pressure systems affecting the UK with any front details, wind direction and strength, weather and cloud expected and temperature from the air mas origin etc. After seeing Gary and Alexi pick apart the synoptic charts all day I found myself seeing detail I hadn't previously. It was really nice to think on such a broad scale before then getting down to area details like we usually do to go flying. 

Although it mean't giving up a days flying, I would recommend this course to most folk in our club. I have wanted to do a course in Meteorology for many years now and although just one day, I felt I go a lot out of it. I would love to do more.

Gary said they plan to do more courses so if your interested, follow the link above and put your name down.

Now for the practical :-)

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Cheers,

Ben.

[Richard Vereker]

@£60 thats a steal  :-) even for the parawatchers like myself 

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[Ben Johnson]

My thoughts exactly :-) especially as you have 2 professional meteorologists bouncing off each other. 

The videos they put out are a really good guide to topics discussed in more detail. 

Cheers,

Ben.

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[c cook]

Ben, good to hear from you.

Sounds super interesting, I'll give you a call for a catch-up and hear a bit more about the mwis course if that is good for you. If you get a chancr, drop me a message as to when you might be free...

Not long back from norway snowkiting and have a new Flow Freedom2 glider so super keen to get out for some flying on it if you are about....

All my best

Cris

 

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From: 'Ben Johnson' via LLSC <ll...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, April 11, 2022 10:22:12 AM
To: ll...@googlegroups.com <ll...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [LLSC] MWIS met course write up

 

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