LAUSR

The Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) was used to produce both 9 and 3 km resolution ensemble forecasts from the deterministic Global Forecast System (GFS) model for microclimatic, agricultural regions in New York State. The forecasts were then statistically post‐processed to generate probabilistic forecasts for surface temperature (T), specific humidity (q), incoming solar radiation (SR) and precipitation (P). T was post‐processed with non‐homogeneous Gaussian regression (NGR), q and SR with truncated NGR, and P with extended logistic regression. A comparison of forecast skill was conducted between these post‐processed forecasts, the raw WRF output, the GFS forecasts and forecasts from the National Weather Service's deterministic National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD). Overall, significant improvement was observed in post‐processed WRF forecasts over all other methods for all locations and variables. Furthermore, raw WRF ensembles were found to outperform deterministic NDFD, so that if observational data are unavailable for post‐processing, dynamically downscaled WRF should be selected over deterministic, human‐altered NDFD forecasts. Finally, the 9 km post‐processed WRF had the same forecast skill as the 3 km post‐processed WRF, except for precipitation, rendering the 3 km WRF unnecessary if observational data are available, saving computational cost.