Forecasts have been collected from our participants and sorted into three categories, events, sky conditions and temperature. Over the next few days, we'll see who most accurately forecasts the weather from Thursday through Monday.
The original rules have been amended in order to make this a bit easier to tabulate. See below for details. As mentioned, a control case has been added for comparison. This is very simply created by averaging the forecasts for the last several years and assuming it will rain every day, the sky will be mostly cloudy, and the temperature is the average of the previous ten years' temperatures on the particular day.
For those of you who are interested, here is the ten year weather history for the five day period. As you can see, the chance of some form of precipitation occurring pretty good. Comparatively, over 60% of the days in February see rain. So my friends in Texas don't panic, we historically average about 1/10" of rain a day, enough to keep the banana slugs slimy, but nowhere near enough to warrant building an ark. Snow occurs very rarely, less than 2% of the time.
Sky condition was not available on a daily basis, but looking at the aggregate historical data for the month, you'll understand why Seattle has an unusually high suicide rate in the winter: only 17% of February days are sunny.
The temperature stays within a fairly tight band, ranging from lows of around 37°F to highs of 51°F. There's no ice fishing here, but we're unlikely to be working on our tans in the backyard, either.
Because there is some normalization of the forecast into the matrix, I have saved screenshots of the original forecasts in the event the judging committee (e.g., me) needs to resolve disputes. In tabulating the data, it was hard to map sky conditions beyond the absolutes, and some sources lacked any precision. So, in order to keep this similar and work around any interpretation issues, sky condition points are as follows:
The original rules have been amended in order to make this a bit easier to tabulate. See below for details. As mentioned, a control case has been added for comparison. This is very simply created by averaging the forecasts for the last several years and assuming it will rain every day, the sky will be mostly cloudy, and the temperature is the average of the previous ten years' temperatures on the particular day.
For those of you who are interested, here is the ten year weather history for the five day period. As you can see, the chance of some form of precipitation occurring pretty good. Comparatively, over 60% of the days in February see rain. So my friends in Texas don't panic, we historically average about 1/10" of rain a day, enough to keep the banana slugs slimy, but nowhere near enough to warrant building an ark. Snow occurs very rarely, less than 2% of the time.
Sky condition was not available on a daily basis, but looking at the aggregate historical data for the month, you'll understand why Seattle has an unusually high suicide rate in the winter: only 17% of February days are sunny.
The temperature stays within a fairly tight band, ranging from lows of around 37°F to highs of 51°F. There's no ice fishing here, but we're unlikely to be working on our tans in the backyard, either.
Because there is some normalization of the forecast into the matrix, I have saved screenshots of the original forecasts in the event the judging committee (e.g., me) needs to resolve disputes. In tabulating the data, it was hard to map sky conditions beyond the absolutes, and some sources lacked any precision. So, in order to keep this similar and work around any interpretation issues, sky condition points are as follows:
- One point will be awarded for accurately predicting partly cloudy, mostly cloudy, partly sunny, overcast.
- Two additional points will be awarded for accurately predicting mostly sunny and/or fog.
- Three additional points are awarded for accurately predicting sunny.
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