Meteorological measuring instruments made by Lufft are used in many places. For several years now, Lufft all-in-one systems have also been increasingly deployed in the densely populated monitoring network of the Swiss Severe Weather Center. More about the Swiss Weather Center and the cooperation with Lufft in this blog entry…

Meteorological measuring instruments made by Lufft are used in many places. For several years now, Lufft all-in-one systems have also been increasingly deployed in the densely populated monitoring network of the Swiss Severe Weather Center – www.meteocentrale.ch – especially in mountainous regions. The Swiss Severe Weather Center is a project of Meteomedia, the private Swiss weather service based in Appenzell, which will operate under the name of MeteoGroup Switzerland as from 20 March 2014.

In addition to a very dense network of its own weather stations in Switzerland and Germany – approximately 900 stations in total – Meteomedia also operates severe weather centers throughout Europe.

For accurate local weather forecasts, in recent years Meteomedia has progressively improved its MOS (model output statistics) forecasting method. Very accurate local forecasts are produced by means of statistical postprocessing (stepwise multiple regression) of the large-scale model predictions using local measurements. Particularly in alpine areas with complex topography, the weather stations capture the diverse local weather phenomena remarkably well – including such as offshore / onshore wind, mountain / valley wind, foehn wind, inversions, receding snow line and so on. The intelligent, adaptive mix of 5 different model MOS predictions has a high hit rate, confirmed in different forecast comparisons.

The Weather Cockpit for visualization of the weather station Lufft WS600 at the ski jump in Oberstdorf

Now, in cooperation with the Lufft company, Meteomedia has developed the “Weather Cockpit”, a web-based visualization tool that uses a number of widgets to combine current data, forecasts and local severe weather warnings on a single platform.

A Lufft WS600 weather station is installed at the ski jump in Oberstdorf, venue of the famous annual Four Hills Tournament. At the new portal, all important data are available to the event organizer, OK, race director and FIS representatives: current readings, historical data and forecasts as well as local severe weather warnings. Depending on requirements, further widgets can be provided: for example radar or satellite images, lightning detection or signal lights for decision makers. Meteomedia continuously develops new widgets that cover all weather-related requirements in the fields of events, tourism, logistics and traffic, as well as retail.

About the author: My name is Joachim Schug, professional meteorologist and for 7 years head of the successful Swiss Severe Weather Center. I also use the new Lufft measurement technology increasingly in connection with event weather.