On Wed, 3 Dec 2014 01:38:53 -0800 (PST)
Graham Easterling wrote:

On Tuesday, December 2, 2014 11:17:35 PM UTC,
wrote:
A remarkable looking chart for Eastern Greenland with some of the
tightest packed isobars over the North Atlantic area I have ever
seen. One wonders what sort of wind speeds could be generated? The
wind chill must be incredible with the wind from due north.

You have to be a bit careful in interpreting charts near the east
Greenland coast. Some of the gradients are shown as falsely steep due
to the correcting of the surface pressure over the Greenland plateau
to sea level.

There are other's on USW who no more about the problem them me.


Yes, tight gradients there are quite common and, as you say, often
quite meaningless. I see winds along that coast at 06Z this morning
range from 5kts to 60kts.
http://www.wetterzentrale.de/topkarten/fsbeobl.html

I know several forecasters, when drawing up the surface chart, used to
just stop the isobars at the Greenland coast. As well as being more
realistic, it saved on pencils.

--
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks.
[Retired meteorologist and computer programmer]
Posted with Claws: http://www.claws-mail.org/