ForecastWatch.com June Customer Newsletter
Welcome to the June Newsletter of ForecastWatch.com. You are receiving this email as a subscriber to a ForecastWatch.com product or by having had a demo account created for you. Please see the bottom of this email for instructions on how to unsubscribe from this newsletter.
Eric Floehr, founder of ForecastWatch.com, was recently invited to speak to Marysville High School students about the weather and weather forecasting. The students were studying weather in Ms. Juergen's special education class. "I really enjoyed talking with the students." said Eric. "They were interested and excited to learn more about the weather and weather forecasting. They asked about hail, how lightning is formed, and how people predict what the weather will be like. Their curiosity was wonderful. I hope they never lose it."
ForecastWatch.com is adding skill measurements, comparing skilled forecasts with climate and persistence "no-skill" forecasts. As part of that, climate and persistence forecasts have been put into the same system as the forecasters. Because of this, it is now easy to see how well climatology and persistence forecasts compare. This allows some interesting questions to be answered. Which is more accurate, using climate or persistence forecasts? You might suspect that persistence is probably better than climate when predicting a day out. But does climate ever become more accurate? If so, how far out?
You'll be happy to know that the unskilled forecasts don't ever beat the skilled forecasts in aggregate. That's certainly what you'd expect. Meteorologists do a good job, even if the public often only remembers the misses. The next step is using the new data to derive skill measurements, and make those available. For now, those with online access can compare accuracy measurements against climatology and persistence forecasts.
May accuracy data has been audited and loaded for viewing. After being negatively biased, on average, since February, high temperature forecasts swung to a positive bias in May, by about 0.21 degrees. Overall RMS continues to decline as expected as we enter the summer months. To view the May data, as well as year-to-date and historical numbers, log on to http://www.forecastwatch.com
As always, let us know what you think at ideas@forecastwatch.com . We welcome your ideas and suggestions to make our services better and more useful.
