Shipping Forecast excluding the header line, has a limit of 350 words—except for the 0048 broadcast, where it is increased to 380 to accommodate Trafalgar's inclusion—and has a very strict format. It begins with "And now the Shipping Forecast, issued by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency at xxxx today." This format is followed quite strictly, although some continuity announcers read out the actual date of issue as opposed to the word "today". This is followed by gale warnings (winds of force 8 or more on the Beaufort scale), if any (e.g., "There are warnings of gales
Integrated Forecast System the predominant global medium-range models in general use worldwide; its most prominent rivals in the 6–10 day medium range include the American Global Forecast System (GFS), the Canadian Global Environmental Multiscale Model (GEM and GDPS) and the UK Met Office Unified Model. The version of the IFS run at ECMWF is often referred to as the "ECMWF" or the "European model" in North America, to distinguish it from the American GFS. ECMWF runs the IFS in several configurations. The highest resolution "HRES" configuration is run every twelve hours out to ten days with a horizontal resolution of 9 km using