Regular Season Contest Overview

DC 1917

Here/s the sequence of events whenever there/s a contest-worthy snow storm.

A 'Call for Forecasts' is made ~24 hours before the deadline for entries. The deadline is usually 10:00 PM ET the day before snowfall is expected.

The 'verification period' begins @midnight on the day snow is expected to begin over any forecast station. The period continues until snow has stopped falling over the entire forecast area or a hard deadline for the Contest/s end has been set.

Once the snow has stopped and the NWS has reported the snowfall amounts in their daily climatological bulletins ... a 'preliminary verification' data table with the storm-total snowfall amounts is posted to the web log. These numbers are subject to challenge and / or modification for ~24 hours ... if they are found later to be in error and / or new information becomes available.

All forecasts are then verified and ranked. The forecaster with the smallest sum of squared-errors (SUMSQ) is the winner.  Storm summary statistics and individual station forecast results are posted to the Contest/s web page. Forecasters are notified by e-mail when the final results are posted.

Summary
Day 1 - Call for Forecasts
Day 2 - Deadline - 10:00 PM Eastern (edited:  15-NOV-18)
Day 3 - Snow happens.  Forecasts posted to web site.  Forecast summary posted to web log.
Day 4 - Preliminary snowfall totals posted to web log ... if storm duration is one day.
Day 5 - Verified forecasts and Final Results posted to web site. Brief storm wrap-up posted to web log.

Complete contest rules and more information here.