Allow HiRA verification on UGRID forecasts in Point-Stat

[j-opatz]

Describe the Enhancement

With the introduction of supporting forecasts that are not on traditional grids through the UGRID methodology, new requests have emerged from users to increase the accessibility of various MET options on those UGRID forecasts.

For this issue, there is a desire to have UGRID forecasts evaluated using the HiRA evaluation method within the Point-Stat tool. This method requires knowledge of the surrounding "neighborhood" of gridpoints for a given point observation. At the current moment, UGRID methodology works by knowing only the nearest gridpoint to the nearest observation point (i.e. nearest neighbor method). We would need to enhance the logic to know the N-nearest neighbors, with a minimum number of 3 and 5 and 6 neighbors being common.

There is also a possibility that more advanced neighbor-selection methods will be desired, which may boost the complexity of this issue (or, likely, spinnoff issues to support the advanced logic). Those advanced methods would require more time for development, and might push this development in a different direction so we avoid stove-pipe development.

More details will be added as this issue is discussed with Met Office and funds are delegated to the task.

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