January Forecast Contest, Temperatures

[Mallow]

Hi all!

It's the beginning of a new year, and with it a fresh beginning for the monthly temperature contest. I will be running the contest this year, but I'd like to extend a huge thanks to yhbrooklyn and MN Transplant for running it so smoothly in the past.

The scoring this year will be somewhat different, but the spirit of the contest will remain unchanged. You're trying to put out your best monthly departure forecast for the following three stations...

DCA

NYC

BOS

All departures will be rounded to the nearest tenth of a degree.

Departures will be from the 30-year means. If someone could provide me with a link to the actual data set that is used to calculate the 30-year means (so, monthly mean temperatures for each month during the 30-year period), that would be excellent. The reason is that I'm going to be using the standard deviation for each site for each month to calculate a "z-score". When I have the calculations, I'll post the standard deviations so people can use the info to help them come up with a forecast.

For scoring, as I said above, I'll be calculating a z-score for each site, in the following manner:

z-score = | forecast departure - actual departure | / standard deviation

I will then find the two-tailed percentile corresponding to that z-score (a z-score of 0 would correspond with 1.00, a z-score of 1 would correspond with 0.32, etc), multiply it by 100, round to the nearest whole value, and use that value as your score for that site for that month.

This will allow up to 100 points per site per month, or up to 300 points per month.

One advantage to this scoring system is that if you divide your total by 300, and by the number of months in which you've participated, your average is actually a meaningful value. The average that you'd get that way is exactly equal to the average number of standard deviations you have been from the actual departures, overall.

EDIT: Thanks to skier for noting that the above is not actually accurate.

For fun, there will also be a "normal" (0 departures) and "consensus" (average of all forecasts) score available for each month.

Forecasts are due one minute before midnight of the month in question. You may edit your guess at any time through the due date, but if you do, you must do so in a new post. If you edit your guess in its original post, and I have already recorded your previous guess, I will not look at your post again to see that you have updated your guess. It's really quite simple to just reply to your original post to update your guess, so this should hopefully not be too big a deal.

So, without further ado, let's get those guesses started. Remember, all you have to do is guess the monthly departure for the following three sites.

January...

DCA:

NYC:

BOS:

[Inudaw]

DCA: -2.4

NYC: -1.8

BOS: -1.5

Totally banking on only about 7 days above average in the cities with the rest relying on being below average with the resurgence of the -nao.

[Feb]

DCA - 2.4

NYC -1.5

BOS -0.9

TOTAL - 4.8

[nj2va]

DCA: -1.9

NYC: -1.3

BOS: -0.7

Total: -3.9

[Stormlover74]

DCA: -0.5

NYC: +1.5

BOS: +2.1

[Fozz]

DCA: +0.4

NYC: -0.7

BOS: -1.2

[LVblizzard]

DCA: -1.3

NYC: -2.0

BOS: -1.6

Total: -4.9

[wxmeddler]

DCA: +0.4

NYC: -1.2

BOS: -0.8

[hockeyinc]

DCA : +3.2

NYC: + 2.1

BOS: + 1.0

Total: +6.3

ACY: + 3.5 (closest to home)

[GD0815]

DCA: +2.9

NYC: +2.7

BOS: +2.1

CUM-+7.7

[Ginx snewx]

DCA -1.5

NYC -1.8

BOS -2 8

[phil882]

DCA -0.5

NYC -1.0

BOS -1.5

Total: -3.0

[ace0927]

DCA -1.7

NYC -2.1

BOS -1.1

[hudsonvalley21]

DCA -1.8

NYC -1.4

BOS -0.9

Total: -4.1

[Kevin Druff]

DCA: -0.7

NYC: -0.1

BOS: +0.2

[SACRUS]

DCA : +1.2

NYC : +0.4

BOS : -0.1

Tot: +1.5

[nzucker]

BOS: -3.1F

NYC: -2.6F

DCA: -2.0F

Total: -7.7F

[H2Otown_WX]

DCA: +1.1

NYC: -0.6

BOS: -0.3

Total: 0.2

[Damage In Tolland]

DCA - 0.8

NYC -1 .3

BOs - 1.8

-3.9

[Ellinwood]

DCA: 1.7

NYC: 1.8

BOS: 1.9

SEE NEW POST

Longer periods of near normal to slightly below normal, with some short but big warm ups.

I assume we'll still be using the '71-'00 normals until next month

[MN Transplant]

DCA: 1.7

NYC: 1.8

BOS: 1.9

Longer periods of near normal to slightly below normal, with some short but big warm ups.

I assume we'll still be using the '71-'00 normals until next month

This is an interesting point. When do the new norms actually come out?

DCA: -1.0

NYC: -2.6

BOS: -2.5

[Ellinwood]

This is an interesting point. When do the new norms actually come out?

They can be calculated right on January 1st for the climo stations (which of course all 3 cities are), but I'm not sure when the NOAA will officially release their numbers.

Data from places like CoCoRaHS could take up to late spring to get calculated.

[FrederickWX]

DCA: -0.3

NYC: -1.0

BOS: -1.5

I think DCA will be pretty close to normal, whereas areas further north will have larger negative deviations from normal.

[pojrzsho]

DCA +1.5

NYC +2.1

BOS +2.3

Total: +5.9

[free_man]

DCA +1.5

NYC: +1

BOS: +1

[tplbge]

DCA +3.5

NYC +2.8

BOS +1.9

Total: +8.2

[cpickett79]

DCA 0 (neutral)

NYC -1.3

BOS -1.3

[mattie g]

DCA: -0.4

NYC: +0.7

BOS: +1.2

I'm in the camp of generally below-normal temps, especially the farther south you go, but with the warmups offsetting the cool periods.

[Tom]

DCA: -0.7

NYC: -0.9

BOS: -0.6

Total: -2.2

[donsutherland1]

DCA: +0.2°

NYC: -0.5°

BOS: -1.2°

Total: -1.5°