Sebastian Vettel has secured the win at the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps. He passed pole sitter Hamilton in the first lap and did not come under threat at any time. Fernando Alonso finished second while Lewis Hamilton completes the podium in third place.
And there's your problem. The texan met forecasters once took the piss out of the UK's met office for using a supercomputer 20 times more powerful than theirs to make a forecast that was 1/7th of the distance into the future that the texans were predicting. All in all 140 times "worse" forecasting ability. The UK met office responded by asking the texans to try producing a forecast for a small area of the UK 2 hours into the future. They could not do this.godlameroso wrote:I use the same methods all the top meteorological researchers use here in the good ol' USA.
I don't doubt that you have a lot of experience in making forecasts. What I doubt is that you can make a more accurate forecast than the professional meteorologists at the various weather offices throughout Europe. These guys do this day in day out all year round and have far more resources to devote to the task of making an accurate forecast than you, and yet they still do not think they can make an accurate forecast for this region even a couple of days ahead of schedule, let alone more than a week.I do a lot of validation work with the meteorology department in the university where NOAA is headquartered. I'm not a meteorologist by trade, but I've worked with the staff and faculty long enough to learn a couple things.
The problem is that in the US it's relatively easy to predict where a large blob of high pressure is going to be in 2 weeks time, and that makes it generally fairly easy to generate reasonable-ish forecasts. In north western europe though, the path of a pressure system is much harder to predict, as it's influenced by all kinds of unpredictable things like the state of the gulf stream, the state of the jet stream, etc. The problem comes that only a minor change in a system's approach to western britain can have really hugely significant effects on the weather in the rest of europe. It tends a little bit north over Scotland? Suddenly belgium is sat in a huge high pressure zone and gets a week of 35°C weather. It tends a little bit sound over France? Suddenly belgium is sat under a whole series of fronts and gets both unsettled temperatures and drizzle. Which of those is going to happen is near impossible to predict a week in advance here.godlameroso wrote:Tbh most meterolgists might as well be licking their thumb holding it in the air and making assumptions from barometric pressure. The hardest part about predicting the weather is all the stuff thats not directly measurable, the state of Earth's magnetic field, surrounding weather systems, the trade winds, UV forecasts, even air quality and refracitivity of the topography has an impact on weather. The more of these things you can account for the more accurate you tend to be. This is what weather scientists try to take into account when determining Theta-E values.
You don't, no one can. That's why even the professional meteorologists say that they can't, and why every time I've cited yr.no it's come with the qualification that it's almost certainly inaccurate when forecast this far out.SiLo wrote:So basically you can't predict the weather unless you know everything there is to know about all of those factors you suggested. So tell us, how do you do it?
That is what I was thinking. But yeah it is hard to tell, the cars may have developed quite a bit since the early races as well.beelsebob wrote: You could argue that RedBull will benefit, as their only poles this year have come from wet conditions.
You sure about that, Friday wasn't so good.godlameroso wrote:Not last year.
Hobbs04 wrote:I've noticed this track over the last 4 years younger drivers have had above par qualifying. IIRC we had alguersauri qualify in the wet 6th or 7th and Bruno Senna in the top 10 also. Maybe Bottas can repeat his Canada quali in the wet. Either way soccer starts tomorrow something to ease the pain from my f1 withdrawals.
