9th Annual Mid-Atlantic Snowfall Contest

[North Balti Zen]

8th lowest guess and...feels way too optimistic at this juncture. 

[RodneyS]

25 minutes ago, North Balti Zen said:

8th lowest guess and...feels way too optimistic at this juncture. 

Are you already regretting not following through on your below statement of November 10th? 

Just waiting til the last possible minute to go .1 across the board…

[North Balti Zen]

Kinda…

[Roger Smith]

From an earlier post, these are averages of the past contest winters:

averages 2014/2015-2022/2023 ___ 14.5 __ 9.8 __ 15.8 __ 8.3 ___ (total 48.4)

past seven avg (2016/17- 22/23) ____ 9.5 __ 6.9 __ 10.3 __ 6.7 ___ (total 33.4)

 

[RodneyS]

16 hours ago, Roger Smith said:

From an earlier post, these are averages of the past contest winters:

averages 2014/2015-2022/2023 ___ 14.5 __ 9.8 __ 15.8 __ 8.3 ___ (total 48.4)

past seven avg (2016/17- 22/23) ____ 9.5 __ 6.9 __ 10.3 __ 6.7 ___ (total 33.4)

 

Thanks, Roger.  I wonder if anyone ran a Mid-Atlantic contest on any Internet site in 2009-10?  If so, were the picks abnormally high?

[Herb@MAWS]

10 hours ago, RodneyS said:

Thanks, Roger.  I wonder if anyone ran a Mid-Atlantic contest on any Internet site n 2009-10?  If so, were the picks abnormally high?

Lots of stats here/below altho it may not include specific answers to your question.

http://www.newx-forecasts.com

A fun contest to forecast against yourself and others. If anyone recalls the “Joseph Bartlo days” on the 1990’s ne.weather Usenet bulletin boards, this is where some of us landed. Includes enough stats to make your head explode. 
 

[RodneyS]

5 hours ago, Herb@MAWS said:

Lots of stats here/below altho it may not include specific answers to your question.

http://www.newx-forecasts.com

A fun contest to forecast against yourself and others. If anyone recalls the “Joseph Bartlo days” on the 1990’s ne.weather Usenet bulletin boards, this is where some of us landed. Includes enough stats to make your head explode. 
 

Thanks, Herb.  I know that the Capital Weather Gang had one of their better snow forecasts for 2009-10, but I'm not sure anyone foresaw the record amount of snow that season.

[Roger Smith]

Well I had a look (I participate in those contests) and apparently herb @ maws won the 2009-10 contest, the website does not preserve details but given 15-20 were usually in these contests, herb probably forecast close to what happened. I managed to win 2010-2011 and 2011-12 which surprised me since 2011-12 was probably a very snow-deficient winter but I do vaguely recall predicting a mild winter on Eastern wx before we got going here.

I was going to plug the ne-wx site and will do it now, follow that link above and check it out. Don Sutherland (NYC) routinely does very well in storm forecasts. 

 

[Roger Smith]

Last call for two snowfall contests (deadlines for both are end of Sunday 10th): 

(1) On our site, in general interest forum, you can enter a nine-location snowfall contest in the Dec 2023 contest thread.

(2) At link below, you can enter 25th annual northeast US snowfall contest for 25 locations in the eastern US, as well as storm forecast contests announced on site when available...

http://newxsfc.blogspot.com

[RIC Airport]

RIC up to 0.2" after this morning's snow.

[RodneyS]

39 minutes ago, RIC Airport said:

RIC up to 0.2" after this morning's snow.

Thanks.  So RIC and IAD (0.5 inches) have exceeded last season's snow totals.  I have not yet heard about measurable snow at BWI or DCA.  I will update the spreadsheet when I do. 

[RIC Airport]

2 minutes ago, RodneyS said:

Thanks.  So RIC and IAD (0.5 inches) have exceeded last season's snow totals.  I have not yet heard about measurable snow at BWI or DCA.  I will update the spreadsheet when I do. 

LWX had 0.1" for DCA in their PNS statement.

[yoda]

BWI is T

[RodneyS]

Based on the numbers from the Capital Weather Gang, RIC Airport, and yoda, below is the updated spreadsheet. EastCoast NPZ is still in the lead, but he does have an unwanted distinction that no one achieved last season:  Negative departures at DCA, IAD, and RIC.

 

[WxUSAF]

16 minutes ago, yoda said:

BWI is T

WBAL Mets are crying foul on Twitter 

[yoda]

1 minute ago, WxUSAF said:

WBAL Mets are crying foul on Twitter 

I only see a T on the PNS above... but yeah I see

[Prestige Worldwide]

If you could revise lower right now- would you?

[Rhino16]

2 minutes ago, Prestige Worldwide said:

If you could revise lower right now- would you?

Maybe -4 inches or so, enough that the totals could be achieved in 1 storm only.

[nj2va]

22 hours ago, Prestige Worldwide said:

If you could revise lower right now- would you?

No, we could hit my totals with 2 bigger events.  See no reason to change that.

[aldie 22]

On 11/2/2023 at 12:24 PM, aldie 22 said:

The dry is worrisome and I do think temps will be an issue

BWI:  13.7"
DCA: 9.2"
IAD: 16.1"
RIC: 9.6"

SBY: 8.9"

I guess I had a different vision than Ji

[North Balti Zen]

21 hours ago, aldie 22 said:

I guess I had a different vision than Ji

No, no, EVERYONE went high. You are clearly reading it wrong. Ji said everyone and then cited chuck’s guess as evidence…

[Roger Smith]

Seventeen people believed there would be more snow than I did -- in itself, some kind of new record. Usually it's closer to four or five maybe.

I would probably take a few lower now just because we're still at zero and I thought Dec could produce a few inches, but otherwise, the pattern looks to be evolving in a good direction. Anyway, we are stuck with the original guesses, so over-performers are welcome. 

[DownpourDave]

2 hours ago, Roger Smith said:

Seventeen people believed there would be more snow than I did -- in itself, some kind of new record. Usually it's closer to four or five maybe.

I would probably take a few lower now just because we're still at zero and I thought Dec could produce a few inches, but otherwise, the pattern looks to be evolving in a good direction. Anyway, we are stuck with the original guesses, so over-performers are welcome. 

Obviously it’s past the deadline but I might post a late entry just for fun later today.

[RodneyS]

On 12/11/2023 at 9:50 AM, RodneyS said:

Based on the numbers from the Capital Weather Gang, RIC Airport, and yoda, below is the updated spreadsheet. EastCoast NPZ is still in the lead, but he does have an unwanted distinction that no one achieved last season:  Negative departures at DCA, IAD, and RIC.

 

I see that as of 1 PM today (Monday, MLK day), DCA is reporting 0.7 inches and IAD is reporting 0.9 inches.  By tomorrow morning, we should have a new leader -- something that did not happen last season  ;-).  I will update the leader board on Tuesday. 

[RodneyS]

18 hours ago, RodneyS said:

I see that as of 1 PM today (Monday, MLK day), DCA is reporting 0.7 inches and IAD is reporting 0.9 inches.  By tomorrow morning, we should have a new leader -- something that did not happen last season  ;-).  I will update the leader board on Tuesday. 

We indeed have a new leader -- previous Mid-Atlantic snow contest operator @PrinceFrederickWx. So far, the reports for this storm are as follows:

BWI 4.9 inches

DCA 4.1 inches

IAD 4.4 inches

RIC 0.5 inches

There still may be updates to these figures, but the table below shows the current standings.

[PrinceFrederickWx]

I gotta survive Friday but then I should be good for awhile. 

[RodneyS]

2 hours ago, PrinceFrederickWx said:

I gotta survive Friday but then I should be good for awhile. 

Your two closest competitors can't catch you, and so if we get no more than an inch at each of the airports on Friday, you will remain in the lead.

[Roger Smith]

Until Feb 5-6.

 

[RodneyS]

36 minutes ago, Roger Smith said:

Until Feb 5-6.

 

I dunno, Roger, AccuWeather's long-range forecast calls for sunny skies in DC on those two days, and when has that forecast ever been wrong? https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/washington/20006/daily-weather-forecast/327659?day=21

[Roger Smith]

True story, I worked at Accu-weather in winter 1979-80 and next desk over was Joe B.  

It has been downhill ever since (for all of the above? one or two out of three? .. not sayin'). 

We TOTALLY NAILED the leap year day blizzard of 1980. Again, downhill ever since. 

It's a good job we did nail it because there was little snow otherwise. I dimly recall a 6" event around mid-Feb in PA ... Lake Placid NY had to run snow making machines full blast to stage the winter Olympics. It was almost as bad as last winter in terms of no snow, until Feb 28-29-mar 1, quite a storm down around Virginia Beach, and record cold in n.e. US, Ontario. At least we didn't have to choose between models, there was just one or two, the LFm Limited Fine mesh (sounds like a porn site, but it was not that kind of model).

People say how forecasting has improved but I can recall some very good forecasts made with just the tech of 1970s and early 80s, and the good old LFm. That placed the Cleveland blizzard low (1-26-78) as a 960 mb over Lake Ontario 24h in advance, not quite right, but good enough to warn most affected areas of what was coming. Imagine my surprise on morning of Jan 26 coming into a (private forecasting) weather office in Toronto and discovering it was actually a 955 mb low over w Lake Erie to south end of Lake huron, and London ON was getting a south wind gusting to 90 knots with arctic air wrapping around the center blowing squalls off Lake Erie. We shall not see its like again, I suppose.

I knew something was up, we were expecting a snowstorm in Toronto but it was raining and 40F with a very strong east wind at 0800h, and there was an air conditioning unit in my parking space blown off our building, then about 15 min after I got into work and was just looking in awe at the data (teletype), wind shifted to SSW 40 kts and the snow began, so the forecast worked out for wrong reasons in T.O. ... I don't recall if the Ohio blizzard was really nailed by forecasters or not, but from the primitive model of the day, a reasonably close approximation was possible, I would think there was a forecast of an ordinary to severe snowstorm but not the monster that actually hit. I always wonder what the current models would show for 1-26-78, that low was near Atlanta at 00z and deepened 30-40 mbs in only a few hours. I'm pretty sure they would have been a bit closer than Lake Ontario for its 12z position but maybe Erie PA 958 mbs or whatever is 50% better. Those primitive models also told us quite accurately that we would be on the track of Frederic (Sep 1979) and get 4-6 in of rain. Forecasting has not improved very much in my humble opinion, possibly at 3-5 days? But we used to hand draw those progs. And they were often pretty good.