Originally Posted by
peterh337
If forecast skew-ts were accurate, they would be fantastic.
And weather forecasting would be exact too
In reality, these thermodynamic diagrams are just graphics which are generated from the same GFS computer model.
....
The wx we have been having the last few days has indeed been unstable and this shows up on the skew-ts but the weather model itself is far too coarse to predict bases and (especially) tops accurately.
I have been out a couple of times in the last week and found NWX's (navlost.eu) cloud profile was pretty accurate for my routes of flight with cloud density/ bases/ tops of the layers all pretty close to what I saw in flight. This is just a cut through the raw GFS model and seems fine for the overall cloud profile. Forecasting where Cells are going to be and when/where it is going to chuck down rain/hail is impossible. However, there was plenty of vis above the first cloud tops to eyeball the cells and avoid them.