For the New York State forecast, I predicted that at least half of the Golden Snowball cities would have wind gusts of 30 mph or more on Friday. The table below shows the highest speeds for sustained wind and wind gusts, according to the National Weather Service.
| Friday New York State Wind Speeds | ||
|---|---|---|
| City | Sustained Wind | Wind Gusts |
| Cities with wind gusts over 30 mph: 5 | ||
| Albany | 30 | 41 |
| Binghamton | 28 | 37 |
| Buffalo | 31 | 43 |
| Rochester | 35 | 45 |
| Syracuse | 37 | 47 |
This one proved to be correct. Not only did four out of five GSB cities have wind gusts over 40 mph (well above my mark), all but Binghamton had sustained winds of 30 mph or more on Friday. A bit windier than I anticipated. It does count as a correct forecast, but I would have liked the gust numbers to have been a little closer to 30 mph.
For the World forecast, I predicted that at least 1 of Ontario, Canada’s big three cities (Hamilton, Ottawa and Toronto) would be at least 5 degrees below average on either Friday or Saturday. The table shows The Weather Channel’s information for the two days.
| Ontario, Canada High Temperatures | ||
|---|---|---|
| City | Friday Average/Recorded | Saturday Average/Recorded |
| Cities with high temperatures 5 degrees or more below average: 3 | ||
| Hamilton | 34/19 | 34/34 |
| Ottawa | 27/21 | 26/27 |
| Toronto | 36/23 | 35/39 |
This one also turned out to be true, and it wasn’t very close on Friday. Interesting to note the nice warm up on Saturday, and Hamilton ended up hitting their average for that day. Again, I wish the numbers would have been a little bit closer to my threshold, as only Ottawa produced a single digit difference.
While it is nice to be right, these forecasts were a bit off the mark. Sure, it still benefited me here, but it still doesn’t quite sit right with me. Of course, it may very well have just been the luck of the draw this weekend. But if this trend continues for the rest of the month, I’ll look into changing things up in 2010.
| Golden SnowCast Results | |
|---|---|
| Region | Record |
| Overall Percentage: 83.33% | |
| NYS | 2-1 |
| World | 3-0 |
| Overall | 5-1 |
Regardless, I’m now over 80% for the season. Why do I get the feeling that the miss on Buffalo with my first forecast is going to haunt me one way or another?
Have a great week all!
Cheater
Actually I think once we start up what we talked about PSUSyr5 that WeatherManNX01 should be the first person to stump the chump 
Probably.
5/6s is 83.33%, which is over 80%, just like I said. There is nothing wrong with the numbers.
But that does raise a good point, watch out for my calculations…as WeatherManNX01 knows, sometimes they just don’t add up right.
80%? Those numbers don’t sound right? Are you sick?