Unlike many tech firms, which keep the brains of their operations sequestered in dimly lit cubicle farms veneered with the orange dust of long-gone Cheetos stuck to spilled Mountain Dew, 3TIER lets its scientists out in public. Many of the questions Scott Eichelberger, our assessment tsar, fields when he’s staffing the 3TIER booth at meetings have to do with how we perform our weather modeling magic, and where the data comes from. In fact, I had the same questions. Lucky for me, Scott is a kind and patient person, and a gifted explainer.

The most surprising thing I learned from Scott is that the computer model 3TIER uses for assessment, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, is a free program produced and constantly improved by government and research institutions. I could download a copy for my laptop. The data set with which we begin each model run also is freely available, a gift to the planet’s people from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP-NCAR).

Of course, amateur that I am, the output from my Home Wind Assessment Kit would be useless hokum, indicating that glaciers had just retreated from my yard. (more…)