On April 20th, 2024, a 4.5 inch hail stone was observed in southern North Carolina, tying the unofficial state record. The storm that produced the hail stone was only in a Marginal risk, was this a forecast miss? (story coming soon!)
Armchair Forecast Blog
Announcements, Forecast Discussions, Chase Recaps, & more!
On April 20th, 2024, a 4.5 inch hail stone was observed in southern North Carolina, tying the unofficial state record. The storm that produced the hail stone was only in a Marginal risk, was this a forecast miss? (story coming soon!)
Megadeth's "Hanger 18" was blasting over the radio, which appropriately heightened the tension as I pressed down harder on the gas pedal in a race to get out of the way of the rain-wrapped tornado... (story coming soon!)
Beginning in early September, the website will undergo site maintenance to fix known bugs and apply updates based on user feedback over the past few months. A few of the more notable changes include: 1) An overhaul of the scoring system, which will now be based on a simple calculation of root mean squared error between a user's forecast and a practically perfect LSR grid. This change addresses several concerns with the previous scoring system, such as hefty penalties for missing isolated severe weather events on otherwise quiet weather days. 2) All forecasts will be saved and re-scored after 4 days with an updated collection of LSRs. This change allows delayed LSRs to be taken into account when assessing a forecast's accuracy, which gives a more comprehensive picture of forecast skill. 3) A collection of new forecast tools will be introduced to the site as well as several smaller bug fixes. In order to implement these changes some or all user verification data may be lost or reset. Additionally, site outages and/or bugs will be possible through early to mid October. As always, feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns.
As of June 1st, the inagural 2024 spring forecasting tournament is complete!
Congratulations to our winner, keltore (3.4221 points, 33 forecasts), who will be receiving one of our Armchair Forecaster
coffee mugs. It came down to the final forecast as keltore was closely followed by brady_wx (3.2706 points, 30 forecasts)
in second place and arkweather (2.4159 points, 32 forecasts) in thrid place.
Additionally, keltore won the Red Jersey (best tornado forecasts), brady_wx won the Green Jersey (best hail forecasts), and
andrewtornado11 won the Blue Jersey (best wind forecasts). Thank you to everyone who participated this spring! Check back
through the summer as we have new updates coming down the road and future tournaments for you to win.
Effective 3/17/2024 two new scoring rules apply for the forecasting tournament.
1) Hits are now scaled by their corresponding probability value (i.e. hits * (1.0 + probability value)).
This adjustment is made to reward hits at higher probability thresholds, which the previous scoring formulation
failed to properly account for.
2) Forecasters are required to submit a minimum number of forecasts (30) during the tournament period in order to be
eligible to win. This rule is introduced in order to circumvent the potential of a last-minute entry winning the competition
by submitting one particularly good forecast in the event that all other competitors have accumulated scores below 1.0.
In effect, this means that May 1st, 2024 is the final day to sign up for the spring 2024 tournament.
More formal documentation of the updated scoring system and tournament rules can be found in the user guide
and tournament pages.
Thank you to all of the forecasters who gave feedback and pointed out these potential loop holes!
It's here! The 2024 Armchair Forecaster tournament has begun! Forecast your way to the top to earn the glory and the grand prize. Haven't signed up yet? It's not too late to join in sign up here to start forecasting. Want to see the latest stats? Check out the leaderboard to see who's currently on top. Need help finding weather data? The user guide has you covered with a plethora of resources. The contest runs until May 31, 2024 with a winner announced in early June 2024. Good luck!
The grand prize of the 2024 Armchair Forecaster tournament is here! This unique coffee mug has been field tested by veteran coffee drinkers and is guaranteed to hold both hot and cold beverages. Sign up today to compete and win the chalice of champions! More details can be found on the tournament site.
Nobody asked for it, but we delivered it anyways! The realtime and forecast pages now feature looping NEXRAD composite reflectivity imagery as well as the latest images from all 16 GOES-East channels. The forecast page now features loop-able forecasts from the latest HRRR runs for precision forecasting! We've event tossed in some hot keys to expedite your forecasting. No need to thank us, instead thank everyone at IEM for all of the fantastic data, without which none of this is possible.
We are excited to announce the first ever Armchair Forecaster Tournament! Play for pride, bragging rights, and of course, a unique prize. The fun begins March 1st, 2024. In preparation for the tournament, a new scoring scheme will undergo live beta testing on this site during the months of December, January, and February. Check out the tournament site for more details regarding the competition, and the user guide for details regarding the new scoring system.