Saturday, April 9, 2011

Winter '10 / '11 - Season-total Snowfall Forecast Contest - Preliminary Verification

Green >= 75th percentile
Red <= 25th percentile
Eighteen of the 24 forecast stations measured more snow than their period of record normal (PORN).  All told...1,403" of snow were measured...55% more than PORN (909.8") for the months of DEC through MAR.

The winter/s big winner as a percent of normal was ORF with almost three times their PORN snowfall...the bulk of which came in DEC.  Other over-achieving stations in the upper 75th percentile of all forecast stations were EWR...BGR...BDR...ACY...and NYC. 

New monthly records
BTV:  Feb 43.1"
BDR:  Jan 42"
BDL:  Dec 14.2"  + Jan 57"
EWR:  Jan 37.4"
NYC:  Jan 36"
RDU:  Dec 8.3"

Top honors for 'most inches above PORN' went to BGR...BTV...BGM...BDL...EWR...and BOS.

Biggest losers were CAR...RIC...MDT...BWI...DCA...and IAD which all measured less than 100% PORN.

SBY has been removed from the station list b/c of missing data for all months again this year.  All SBY forecasts will be set to zero.

Please note any errors in Comments and include a link to the correct data.

Final results coming in a few days.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

For SBY, you could also go with the storm total from the one storm where they had about 14 inches, because I don't think they got any more snow after that. -- RS

TQ said...

Bonne idée!

I went back through all the contest storms and found SBY measured a total of 14" from three storms (12.2" on 12/26, 1/2" on 1/8, and 1.3" on 1/26).

There may have been an inch or three that fell outside of the 'regular season' Contests but I don't see where it would change the outcome.

Unless there's a strong objection...14" will be entered as the verifying season-total snowfall for SBY.

Anonymous said...

I don't think it would change the outcome either, if you were to add in the April 1-3 snowfalls that would inflate the totals in Maine and a few other stations. When we made these predictions, were they for the winter season or for a time period ending March 31st? Just wondering. I have to admit that I thought most of the winter snowfall would happen in February and actually that month went almost totally snow-free in some places. But I'm relying on compensating errors to be my friend this time around. -- RS

TQ said...

'Season-total' contest runs between 01-DEC-10 and 31-MAR-11.

Lucky for 'us'...la Nina conditions did not take hold until late JAN after the AO flipped.

TQ said...

Found a PNS from AKQ reporting 3" snowfall at SBY on 3/27 which was not included in the original 14" estimate.

SBY forecasts will verify against an estimated 17" season-total snowfall.

Sorry for the delay in posting the final results.

Anonymous said...

Any decisions yet?

Anonymous said...

Who won?

TQ said...

My bad.

Roger Smith
Mitchel Volk
iralibov
TQ
PORN
Donald Rosenfeld
Shillelagh
donsutherland1

Anonymous said...

Will there be a new contest next year?

TQ said...

I expect to carry-on with NEWxSFC for the foreseeable future.

Anonymous said...

When will the Season-total Snowfall Forecast Contest final tabulations be posted?