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2024: WxCory Weather Report Card

Writer's picture: Cory SmithCory Smith

Hello all! So if you are new to my website you may not know that I keep track of the forecasts I do for work. You can see the last time I wrote an article like this HERE but, in 2024 I created a total of 133 FORECASTS!

This article will go over how good those forecasts were but also where I can improve going into the future, so, let's dive into things!

In the past, my forecasts played out pretty similarly: 1. High Temperatures had a lower overall average error

2. The day 1-4 error was pretty low overall

This year I really tried to bring down my low-temperature error as well as brining down my late forecast error. I went ahead and gave myself an expected grade for what my forecast would be before actually compiling my data. You can also see the actual grades I assigned to each category. We will go over each down below.



THE RESULTS



LOW TEMPERATURES: GRADE A

Going into low temperatures first, my goal was to lower my error since this was typically the weakest part of my forecast. While this was one of the best years forecasting in my 7-year career, I can proudly say that my lows did greatly improve! I have always had a warm bias on my next day of forecasting lows and keeping an eye on that really reduced error almost getting it down to 2 degrees flat! Staying below 3 degrees error out to day 5 was not only an improvement but even better than my high temperatures which get worse in the long-term. If we take at the forecast bias the next day's forecast was slightly cool with days averaging a bit warmer than the forecast. It seems I may have slightly overcorrected there but .3 is pretty good! As for the rest of the days, my low temperatures tended to be a bit warm with days being cooler than what I forecast. Now that I see that, I can try to fix that bias going into next year.

HIGH TEMPERATURES: GRADE A

High temperatures were a bit of a mixed bag this year. I decided to give myself an A but was thinking A-, so let's talk this out. First off, days 1 and 2 were AMAZING. Anytime you can average around 2 degrees that is an excellent forecast. So for that part of things, I am very, very happy with how I did. When it comes to the rest of the forecast being over 3 degrees of error is a bit of a bummer; I have done better in the past. The only reason why I decided to still give an A to this category though is the latter range. In the past, days 6 and 7 could see a 4-5 degree error and I kept it well within that. This says that while my forecast was a bit more consistent, there is still some improvement really after day 3. Looking at bias once again, it is almost opposite my low temperatures. The next day tended to be a little bit too warm with every other day being too cool. An easy and clear bias to fix next year!

PRECIPITATION FORECAST: GRADE B+

Let's finally talk about precipitation. To explain how these numbers were determined, any day forecast with a rain chance of 30% or greater was hard coded as precipitation being expected in the forecast. To use verification any rain (trace or above) is counted as precipitation. For 2024, my next-day accuracy was around 85% which was great! After that, my accuracy was around 60-70%. Day 7 was around a coin flip at 53% accuracy. This was a bit of a disappointment with other years being in the 70%+ range in prior years for Days 2-4. While this years chart wasn't bad it wasn't as good as other years and for that reason I am giving it a B+.



So, in the end, I think there is some room to improve on what was a good year overall. I'll be in a new location in 2025 so there will be a learning curve but, I can take what I learned this year and apply it to my forecasts going forward. Let me know if you want to know anything more about how I forecast the weather as we go into 2025. Thanks for reading and keep posted for more content!

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A BLOG BY:
CORY SMITH 

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