- We use the ETA vertical coordinates with 45 vertical levels.
- We use the 32-km Operational ETA tiles for the lateral boundary conditions to initialize the model.
- We use the 0.5 degree High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature(SST) dataset and 14-km Great Lakes SSTs if available.
- We use the Kain-Fritsch convective paramaterization.
- We run the model hydrostatically at a 30 second time step.

- The model uses a 30-second land-sea mask for high resolution depiction of lake and coast shorelines.
- The model domain is a 55x91 grid centered at 39.48N 82.30W.
- The output is available at 3-h forecast increments to 30-h.
- Information on the model run times can be found at the bottom of the page.

- We use a dual Athlon 2600+ (2.13GHz each) Linux machine with 2GB memory and 120GB disk to run the model.
- We use GEMPAK 5.6H to create the graphics to post to the web page.

We expect to use the model qualitatively to help refine phenomena related to terrain and lake effect snow. Things like orographically forced precipitation seem to be handled well in a general sense, but the exact placement and magnitude of weather features is not expected to be perfect, as is the case with any model. It should, however, give some clues about how complex terrain can affect the atmosphere.

NOTE
This is an experimental and research model that is not supported operationally. It may not always be available, may have errors, or be changed without notice to support local research and model experimentation.

FUTURE PLANS
- decrease the horizontal resolution to 7 km.
- use the 12-km Operational ETA tiles for the lateral boundary conditions to initialize the model.

If you have questions related to our version of the ETA model, web graphics or the site, please contact rlx.webmaster@noaa.gov.

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