With this season’s Golden Snowball contest just about over, I figured this would be the best time to recap the forecasts. There are still 2 forecasts left to show results, so let’s get to it!
The first one was a PBR and goes back to the middle of March and involved Flagstaff, AZ. If they totaled at least 16 inches of snow March 18th and 19th, that would be a Bull’s Eye. 12 to 16 inches would be On Target. Here are the totals for each day:
March 18: 19.5
March 19: 6.9
March 18th by itself was enough to breakthrough the threshold, so that is a Bull’s Eye! By the way, the 19.5 recorded for the date crushed their old record of 8.7 set in 1982.
Now on to the final forecast of the season: the March SITD. That one was for 5 cities in the northeast: Baltimore, MD, Boston, MA, New York, NY, Philadelphia, PA and Washington, DC. If all five had below average snowfall in March, that would be a Bull’s Eye. A majority under average would be on target. Here are the respective cities’ totals, with averages in parenthesis:
Baltimore, MD: 0.0 (1.9)
Boston, MA: 0.6 (7.8)
New York, NY: 0.0 (3.7)
Philadelphia, PA: 0.0 (2.5)
Washington: DC: 0.0 (1.3)
All were below average, (in fact, all but Boston had no snowfall), so this was a Bull’s Eye forecast, the first of the season for the SITD outlooks.
| GSG Forecast Results | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Forecasts | Bull’s Eye | On Target | Complete Miss | Points |
| Average: 0.88 | ||||
| SITD | 1 | 2 | 1 | 8 |
| PBR | 2 | 2 | 4 | 6 |
| Total | 3 | 4 | 5 | 14 |
The average took a big jump as a result of these results, but it was not enough. The final average is 0.88, below the 1.00 goal at the end of the season. That means next season’s goal will remain at 1.00. It’s the PBR forecasts that did me in this time, with as many Complete Miss forecasts as the other two categories combined.
Just a few more weeks remain in the Golden Snow Globe contest. Enjoy these last few weeks everyone!
