A high-resolution snowfall prediction system developed specifically for Greece.
The Snow Forecasting Model is a high-resolution forecasting system I developed for Greece and neighbouring regions. It produces snowfall forecasts at a spatial resolution of 400 m, using temperature, humidity, geopotential height and precipitation data from major Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models such as ICON-EU, IFS, GFS and GEM.
These forecasts are processed through an algorithm that accounts for snow melting and vertical temperature structure, helping determine where precipitation is most likely to fall as snow during approaching cold-weather events.
A key part of the system is its high-resolution terrain mapping. Potential snowfall areas are projected onto a topographic grid of approximately 6 million points, with around 400 vertical levels at roughly 10 m spacing. This produces a three-dimensional grid of about 2.5 billion points, which is evaluated across successive forecast time steps to generate cumulative snowfall maps.
Since January 2022, the model has been used operationally by Weatherathens, translating numerical weather model output into detailed snowfall forecasts that are easier to interpret and communicate to the public.