RASP News:
July 1:  Cloud composite plot change:  The "Cumulus Cloudbase for Cu Potential > 0" was often missing small regions where the Cu potential was in fact greater than zero.  That has now been altered to "raster" plotting, which will ensure that all locations with a positive Cu potential will be displayed. 
Dec 10, 2005:  Plot "frame" change:  RASP plots contain a dashed line "frame" indicating an outer zone of decreased confidence resulting from mismatches between the coarse and fine nested grids near the boundary.  A recent WRF model alteration doubled the width of the smoothed zone near the boundary so the "frame" border has been increased to reflect that change.
Nov 6:  Cloud Parameter Changes:  I've altered the cloud parameters by removing the previous "OvercastDevelopment" parameters and replacing them with forecasts for "Extensive CloudBase" and "BL Cloud Cover".  "Extensive CloudBase" is a replacement for "OvercastDevelopment", based on a model-predicted cloud water prediction.  "BL Cloud Cover" is based upon the relative humidity in the BL and while overly simplistic can still be useful. 
Nov 2:  World-wide accuracy improvement:  Finally - after beating my head against mysteries with few clues for the past three days, I figured how to to uncompress the new "GRIB2" files produced by NCEP's GFS (Global Forecast System), allowing use of GFS predictions at 0.5x0.5 degree resolution (about 50km) to initialize the non-US forecasts (I've been using GRIB1 files with 100km resolution).  So I've now changed to their use for the SW_SOUTHAFRICA and GREATBRITAIN runs, which should result in improved accuracy of larger-scale (non-terrain-generated) features such as the position/movement of fronts and upper-level clouds. 
Oct 30:  Meteorological model updated:  Today I upgraded my WRF meteorological model to the latest version available, which has several bug fixes and in particular should reduce boundary matching problems (which are occasionally apparent in the region between the domain boundary and the dashed-line "frame").  After correcting some problems I believe I now have it working properly, but will keep an closer-than-usual eye on the processing for the next day. 
Oct 12:  New viewer:  As an alternative to selecting forecast BLIPMAPs from the "index page", a RASP UniViewer is now available.  Some will find this more convenient to use and it can display forecasts for multiple times during the day, but it does assume basic BLIPMAP knowledge provided on the index page so is intended for experienced RASP users.  On startup it displays the current forecast for the parameters utilized for the last forecast viewed. 
Sept 29:  File renaming:  To allow for possible future production of forecasts further than one day ahead, today I altered all filenames to include a day identifier, i.e. "curr" to indicate the current day.  This required changes to the processing programs, the web viewing files, the saved files, etc. so there are many possibilies for error.  I have found no problems in my post-testing, but if you experience a consistent problem trying to view a forecast please let me know so that I can investigate.
Sept 12:  Combined Thermal Updraft and B/S Ratio plot:  A new plot overlays color contours of Thermal Updraft Velocity with black stippling representing two Buoyancy/Shear Ratio ranges: heavy stippling for 0-4 and light for 4-7.  So a user's evalution of thermal velocities can be tempered when those thermals are likely to be broken up by strong windshear. 
Sept 2:  Alteration Update:  I think I've found and fixed all the errors introduced by yesterday's program alterations.  I had to re-start the Great Britain forecasts, which will appear around 2 hours late today.  The other regional forecasts should appear as usual. 
Sept 1:  Major alterations:  To allow more flexible future growth I've had to make major changes in the plotting program and how it interacts with the forecasting program, and also some minor changes in the on-line webpages.  While I've tested everything individually, the changes were complex so it will be a miracle if this all works together and I expect forecasts to be down for awhile.  Afterward things should appear essentially the same from a user perspective - almost all the changes are behind the scenes. 
Aug 16:  BL Top Uncertainty/Variability Criterion Reduced:  I've changed the criterion used for the BL Top Uncertainty/Variability parameter from 4degF to 1degC (1.8degF) so that the estimates will be closer to the average uncertainty/variability rather than a maximum uncertainty/variability.  So values should now be approximately half of what they were previously. 
Aug 15:  Simplified Cloudbase prediction plots:  I've created two new RASP plots to simplify cloubase predictions - they depict Cu and OD (spreadout) cloudbase only for those locations where the associated potential is positive.  (This assumes that the theoretical criterion truly represents conditions under which such clouds do/don't form - locations where other criterion values have been empirically found to produce better results will have to use the traditional Cu/OD potential and cloudbase plots.)
ARCHIVE of older news items which have now lost much relevance

I only look at the webpages and maps that I use personally or that I suspect might contain an error.  If you notice a consistent problem with a webpage or map, please post a message on the RASP Forum.