Weather League 2009

Danno

I started this thread as Pat (Deep Easterly) is considering changes to stations used in calculating the mean temperatures for Ireland. The December forecasting thread seems to be cluttered with talk of this, so I feel that we should discuss what format the 2009 competition takes on in this thread.

So, lads, what ideas have yea???

M.T. Cranium

How about a home game for good old M.T.C. ??

Just kidding, it wouldn't help me.

The comp has been fine the way it was, always an interesting bonus question and the basics. I would suggest dropping the place of max and min temps, maybe adding the date instead (ten points if you hit it right on, five for one day off, etc down to zero). Or keep the place and add this feature.

It's going to be fun no matter what happens, you can't really go wrong as long as the rules are clear in the first place (which they always are).

Danno

Bump.

With only a few days remaining in 2008, I suggest that we discuss next years competition.

I am interested to hear Pat's suggestions on what Met E data to use for the coming year.

Strasser

I must admit I am not a big fan of the bonus question, its far to much down to a lucky guess compared to the other questions (not that long term forecasting isn't the same thing I know!) I think for the winter months a question "number of days with snow lying at a midland station at 9am" would be a good question.
Overall very happy with the competition, thanks to all concerned.

Supercell

All suggestions welcome, am happy to make any changes for the greater good.
I think perhaps the headline figures such as mean temp, maybe mean rainfall percentages can be roughly guessed at based on current weather trends with a degree of accuracy, the bonus ones are pretty much total guesswork unless they are based on average, such as for example mean temp over Puck Fair for example .
I dunno, maybe one bonus question per month based on some Irish event of interest like GAA matches, internationals, horse race meets or whatever is warranted for a bit for random fun, maybe with a slant of trying to introduce a skill element into them somehow..like average X variable over the calendar week of x.

All suggestions and bribes welcome :P

nacho libre

I liked the idea of guessing the min and max tempertures each month. however, it would be good to include bonus questions around popular events during the year

Deep Easterly

Along with Nacho's max and min suggestions, How about mean max and min temp questions for the country as a whole? I keep a record of these out of personal interest so no prob there.:)

Other suggestions would include overall mean wind speed for the month, sea level pressure and will it snow at Dublin airport on June 21st.

Just my rather insane 2c worth. :pac:

ch750536

Completely random and particularly stupid questions, with massive amounts of bonus points act as a great leveler between the amateurs who have little time & resource & the pros.

For example:
In may , what will be the average(mode) daily rainfall for Shannon? 1000 pts.

Villain

I haven't taken part before but would like to now that I have a station I will be keeping a closer eye on stats.

But I had always thought that posting your guesses in a public thread is a bit odd as people can wait and see what others post and use that to help them, would it be a better idea to PM the entries to a mod and once the closing date is passed the mod posts the guesses in the thread or is that just taking it too serious?

Danno

Ah, nice to see the Christmas Tipples have not stopped the brains from working. Some interesting suggestions coming through.

I like the idea by Villain of PM'ing the Mod [if he has no problem with it] before the deadline each month.

The suggestion by ch750536 about massive bonus rounds could be extended to cover the four seasons. Perhaps 100 bonus points for the seasonal question.

Keep 'em Coming!

Danno

Must add, we have to decide on what Met E stations to use for 2009.

nacho libre

Deep Easterly wrote: »

Along with Nacho's max and min suggestions, How about mean max and min temp questions for the country as a whole? I keep a record of these out of personal interest so no prob there.:)

Other suggestions would include overall mean wind speed for the month, sea level pressure and will it snow at Dublin airport on June 21st.

Just my rather insane 2c worth. :pac:

this is why i turned down the chance of living in Galway. i value my sanity:pac::pac:

Strasser

Any chance of January questions today? I'll be away around the New year and its difficult to get near a computer sometimes. Summary of my thoughts on issues raised, its worked great so far so don't change too much.

Deep Easterly

From Jan onwards, Stats from Oak Park and Johnstown Castle will be used as part of the Overall Mean for the competition, while Dublin Airport will be dropped due to close proximity to Casement.

However, I will continue to use stats from the original 10 stations (includeing Dublin Airport) for any climate stats posted just to continue with the stats from the last two years I have already gathered.

Danno

Will Roches point be dropped too due to proximity to Cork Airport?

Deep Easterly

Roaches Point was never used in the overall mean...:cool: I use stats from Roaches point to collect sea level pressure and wind direction stats, whereas I don't use Cork in determining the said.

Danno

Pat, could you list the stations used and for what purpose... if anyone wants to raise any points about it then they have till 31/12/08.

Deep Easterly

Just deleted my last post showing stations used for 2009. Not sure I like the set up to be honest.

Decide amongst yerselves what stations to use for the competition, and I will leave the gathering of stats for that amongst anyone who cares to collect them as well (Danno? ). It is now out of my hands and in yours to do this. I will enter the comp for sure though, as I do enjoy the good humour of it.

I will focus from here solely on stats for any weather or climate summaries, as that is where my heart lies, and my main objective is to open a thread sometime in the new year about the climate of Ireland, past and present.

Strasser

Now that all the excitement is over can I ask whats happenned to the league?

Trogdor

Strasser wrote: »

Now that all the excitement is over can I ask whats happenned to the league?

Still running strasser:)
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055474934

Strasser

Are there any results for Jan and Feb?

nacho libre

Strasser wrote: »

Are there any results for Jan and Feb?

Supercell has just come back from China. Give the man a chance.

M.T. Cranium

I know the government of China has a lot of power and influence, but I didn't know they were scoring the weather comps now?

Strasser

nacho libre wrote: »

Supercell has just come back from China. Give the man a chance.

OK, sorry I didn't know. Thanks for the update.

M.T. Cranium

I have offered to score the 2009 Boards weather comps, but before I start, I just wanted to mention what data I have found and ask for some further suggestions.

For January, I think the idea was to continue the 2008 practice of predicting the monthly mean of all reporting stations. From February on, it was going to be the mean of highest and lowest, which I see on the met.ie climate site. For January, so far all I was able to find was that same listing of highest and lowest means, which gave 5.3 C as the monthly mean. The various reporting stations averaged a slight negative anomaly of just -0.1 C relative to normal, but as I don't have the actual value, I can't proceed there yet. I imagine it will turn out to be a value pretty close to 5.3 C in any case.

For the January monthly extremes we have 13.1 C at Malin Head on the 11th and -7.3 C at Mullingar on the 7th. And for the rainfall percentage of normal at Shannon we have 123%.

Now for February, the average of highest and lowest monthly means was 5.8 C, and the general trend for eleven stations was an anomaly of +0.6 C. As they report on the website, the mean went from about four degrees below normal in the first ten days to these eventual somewhat higher means. The highest for the month was 12.7 C at Dublin on the 23rd, while the lowest (which really doesn't do justice to the month really) was -5.1 C at Casement on the 6th. Okay, we also have the two questions about snow cover and snow falling. Does anyone have access to these, officially? I could send an e-mail and ask, but I remember someone saying these became available somewhere later on. I'm guessing the right answers are about 4 or 5 days.

Well then, I will wait to see if I can get any further info, but I probably have enough already to score January. March won't present any problems the way the questions were designed, that should be easy to score.

I will try to devise some points systems that are fair but which give the same totals for each month (for flawless forecasts, that is). And I will try to report these in as timely a manner as possible. So let me know if you have any of the required info, and I can get to it. Thanks in advance, MTC.

M.T. Cranium

Here's the scoring system I thought I would use, to make each month provide the same number of points.

30 points for the monthly mean ... you lose 1 point for every 0.1 you are off.

25 points for the monthly highest temp ... you lose 1 point for every 0.1 error, and anyone who supplies only a round number (e.g. 10 C) is scored from that number point zero.

25 points for the monthly lowest temp ... same scoring as above.

Special Rule for the above three cases where three or fewer contestants would score any points ... if this were to happen, the categories would double the error ranges, for instance, the monthly mean would reduce 1 point for every 0.2 error. Another special rule ... at least one contestant must score 20 for closest prediction in each category, no matter how low their actual score would have been.

This leaves 20 points for all bonus questions, to be divided equally among them if more than one, and the total possible score for the month comes to 100.

Scoring will be similar in general terms, for the % of normal type questions, the error range will be 5% per point, for questions that require a number of days, then it will be one point per day wrong, for temperature questions the same as the rules already mentioned.

Thus far, we have not had questions that require a location with a guess, if we do have those, I will score them 5 for being right and zero for being wrong on top of the numerical scores as shown above.

If we get into any other kinds of questions not covered here, I will state the points criteria at that time (I am assuming that someone else will be setting the monthly comps, please note, whoever that is, keep these bonus questions easy to find the data and a maximum of two bonus questions, one will be fine).

Any suggestions or revisions welcome. -- MTC

Mothman

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

The various reporting stations averaged a slight negative anomaly of just -0.1 C relative to normal, but as I don't have the actual value, I can't proceed there yet. I imagine it will turn out to be a value pretty close to 5.3 C in any case.

available on the monthly data page
though not for the 3 new synoptic stations.

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

Okay, we also have the two questions about snow cover and snow falling. Does anyone have access to these, officially? I could send an e-mail and ask, but I remember someone saying these became available somewhere later on. I'm guessing the right answers are about 4 or 5 days.

They will be in the Bulletin which is published about 2 months after months end. January not out yet

M.T. Cranium

Instead of 5.3 C for January, I came up with 4.8 C as the mean of the reporting stations, so that's what I will use there. This probably points out for future reference that the new system being used (average of highest and lowest) may tend to be higher than the other method by a few tenths especially in the winter months.

I'll try to get some provisional figures for the snow in February data then check those against the final figures. This would allow for an estimated score that won't be far off the final one.

Look for a new thread to be entitled "2009 Boards Monthly Forecast Contest -- Scores" in the next few days. Thanks to Mothman for the helpful pointers.

-- MTC