Boards November forecast comp -- your guess is as good as mine (I hope)

M.T. Cranium

November 2009
___________________

Well then, with the competition into the final stretch, here's the challenge you face (remember, you brought this on yourself) ...

(1) Mean monthly temp (C) usual rules.

(2) Max temp for the month (C) usual rules.

(3) Min temp for the month (C) usual rules.

(4) First report of snow from any met.ie station (keep your eyes open, I am not awake 24/7) ... give the date, and the location (equal points) ... no snow is an option for full marks.

(5) Predict the high temp for new boys Gurteen on Saturday 14th.

You have until Saturday 1 Nov at 2359 GMT to attempt these near-impossible feats of forecasting, without penalty, and all day 2nd to limp in under possible penalty. After that, the doors are locked.

M.T. Cranium

(1) 7.2 C

(2) 18.0 C

(3) -4.4 C

(4) snow on 16th at Knock (on wood)

(5) Gurteen 14th max 11.3

kindredspirit

No. 1. 8.5°C.

No. 2. 17.0°C.

No. 3. -3.3°C.

No. 4. NIL.

No. 5. 11.8°C.

By the way is the 1st of November a Saturday in Canada? It's Sunday here. (Only joking R.)

I made a terrible boo-boo with the ODAS Buoys last month. And I, of all people, should have known better. (I was ½ asleep. :eek: :eek: )

jd

1. 8.1

2. 16.9

3. -3.8

4. BALLYHAISE, November 15th

5. 11.0

Joe Public

(1) 8.2°C

(2) 15.9°C

(3) -2.8°C

(4) snow on 23rd at Knock ( on door )

(5) Gurteen 14th max 12.3°C

nilhg

1) Mean monthly temp (C) usual rules. 8.2 C

(2) Max temp for the month (C) usual rules. 15.1 C

(3) Min temp for the month (C) usual rules. -2.9 C

(4) First report of snow from any met.ie station (keep your eyes open, I am not awake 24/7) ... give the date, and the location (equal points) ... no snow is an option for full marks. None

(5) Predict the high temp for new boys Gurteen on Saturday 14th. 13.6C

dasa29

(1) 8.4°C

(2) 15.5°C

(3) -3.0°C

(4) no snow

(5) Gurteen 14th max 11.2°C

M.T. Cranium

Sorry about the confusion with the dates there, this was bound to happen eventually with me being eight hours behind, of course you have to the end of Sunday, 1 Nov to enter without penalty, so anyone who cares to edit their forecasts can do so freely until then. And you have the option of entering under penalty on Monday, 2 November.

Tis a brave person indeed who would predict no snow in November looking at the charts we see today.

(1) 7.9 C

(2) 17.4 C

(3) -3.5 C

(4) Snow on the 24th at Knock

(5) Gurteen 14th max temp 12.5 C

Danno

(1) Mean monthly temp (C) usual rules. 7.0c

(2) Max temp for the month (C) usual rules.14.4c

(3) Min temp for the month (C) usual rules. -3.9c

(4) First report of snow from any met.ie station (keep your eyes open, I am not awake 24/7) ... give the date, and the location (equal points) ... no snow is an option for full marks. Knock 18th November

(5) Predict the high temp for new boys Gurteen on Saturday 14th. 14.4c

nacho libre

Sorry for being late.


(1) Mean monthly temp (C) usual rules. 7.1

(2) Max temp for the month (C) usual rules 15.4c

(3) Min temp for the month (C) usual rules. -3.4c

(4) First report of snow from any met.ie station (keep your eyes open, I am not awake 24/7) ... give the date, and the location (equal points) ... no snow is an option for full marks. no snow

(5) Predict the high temp for new boys Gurteen on Saturday 14th. 13.3

Strasser

(1) Mean monthly temp (C) usual rules. 7.7

(2) Max temp for the month (C) usual rules 14.6c

(3) Min temp for the month (C) usual rules. -2.4c

(4) First report of snow from any met.ie station (keep your eyes open, I am not awake 24/7) ... give the date, and the location (equal points) ... no snow is an option for full marks. no snow

(5) Predict the high temp for new boys Gurteen on Saturday 14th. 9.3

DOCARCH

(1) Mean monthly temp (C) usual rules. 8.2c

(2) Max temp for the month (C) usual rules. 15.6c

(3) Min temp for the month (C) usual rules. -2.1c

(4) First report of snow from any met.ie station. Knock - 22nd

(5) Predict the high temp for new boys Gurteen on Saturday 14th. 11.6c

M.T. Cranium

Nobody's late yet, I messed up on the date for today (Sunday not Sat 1 Nov) so anyone who wants to edit can do so until midnight.

octo

So, what are the "usual rules"?

M.T. Cranium

As to the "usual rules," I have resorted to this phrase because our competition is an annual one as well as monthly, and we seem to have a regular dozen or so entrants who know the rules ... will probably be revisiting those in December as we plan for perhaps an even larger contest for 2010.

But for the record, the rules we use for monthly mean temperature are simply to take the average of highest and lowest monthly means. The reason for this is that said figures become available very soon after the month ends, and taking the actual average of all stations would require a lot more work for a slightly different result (I inherited this system from the previous manager, and it seems to work reasonably well).

The highest and lowest for the month are basically what you would expect, the highest and lowest temperatures reported at any met.ie station in their monthly summary, once again, available very soon after the month is over for scoring. The bonus questions are scored according to rules that were laid down in January, basically I have some flexibility there if the scores are all going to be low, I rank the predictions and score them that way.

Anyway, the deadline for any other entries will soon arrive (midnight) and I would say to anyone who wants to join in, try Nov and Dec if you like but think about joining in for sure in January when the new annual competition starts up. We'll have a discussion about the contest to see what people would like to do (same or anything new and different) in December some time.

200motels

1) Mean monthly temp (C) usual rules. 8.7C
(2) Max temp for the month (C) usual rules. 16.3C
(3) Min temp for the month (C) usual rules. -2.5C
(4) First report of snow from any met.ie station (keep your eyes open, I am not awake 24/7) ... give the date, and the location (equal points) ... no snow is an option for full marks. No Snow
(5) Predict the high temp for new boys Gurteen on Saturday 14th. 11.6c

octo

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

But for the record, the rules we use for monthly mean temperature are simply to take the average of highest and lowest monthly means.

Thanks MT. Might leave it til January. So, those would be the average of all the met.ie highest and lowest?

M.T. Cranium

More or less, but the technical answer would be, it's the average of the two stations out of about a dozen, which happen to record the highest and lowest average for the month, and that's how they record their average (from their daily highs and lows). I'm guessing that this simplified method usually comes with a few tenths of a degree of the more complicated way of averaging all the stations (which get their averages as you say).

And I didn't mention this before, but our conventional scoring is to give 30% for that monthly average, where you lose 1 point per 0.1 C deg, and 25% each for the monthly high and low extremes, same deductions.

Try it out in December if you want, it's better to try one before the year starts to get a feel for it.

M.T. Cranium

Gurteen achieved a high of 9.6 C on the 14th. Strasser picks up the gold medal on that one with 9.3 C.

Has anyone seen a mention of snow yet at official sites? I've only seen reports of snow on higher elevations but nothing spotted at the official stations yet.

Joe Public

What defines snow at any of the weather stations?

M.T. Cranium

I would take it to mean any report of snow (in an hourly report or special) at any of the various regular observing sites on the met.ie website.

It would not mean a report of lying snow with a given depth, that would be stated more like "name the station with the first report of lying snow" -- but I hope the various entrants took the question the way I meant it.

I've seen reports (on my forecast thread for example) from travellers who have seen snow at higher elevations, but there again, I think the contest entrants would all agree those reports, while interesting, are not examples to be used in determining this contest question.

Any thoughts?

Joe Public

There's a report of snow at Johnstown Castle, does that count?


LATEST IRISH WEATHER REPORTS
ON 21-NOV-2009 for 19:00
Location Wind Weather Temp Humidity Rain Pressure

JOHNSTOWN CASTLE(A) S 15 Gust 26 RECENT SNOW 10 82 1.9 995

jd

That would be it, unless someone knows of an earlier report

Danno

At 10c, it can be dismissed as an error report.

M.T. Cranium

I saw that, is there a human observer there, because snow at 10 C, seems more likely to be hail ... but I'll seek clarification ... it's probably going to snow somewhere tomorrow, I would think.

Joe Public

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

I saw that, is there a human observer there, because snow at 10 C, seems more likely to be hail ... but I'll seek clarification ... it's probably going to snow somewhere tomorrow, I would think.

JOHNSTOWN CASTLE
Location:
52.292°N
6.5° W
49M above mean sea level
Johnstown Castle Automatic Weather Station (AWS) was opened in 2003 and is situated in the grounds of the Teagasc research centre, Johnstown Castle, Co. Wexford. The AWS has replaced a manual climate station which has a continuous climatological record since 1914. Since April, 2008 the station has replaced Rosslare as a WMO Synoptic Station.


Maybe Octo or MetEireann can give a definitive.

MetEireann

Joe Public wrote: »

LATEST IRISH WEATHER REPORTS
ON 21-NOV-2009 for 19:00
Location Wind Weather Temp Humidity Rain Pressure

JOHNSTOWN CASTLE(A) S 15 Gust 26 RECENT SNOW 10 82 1.9 995

Hi Folks - As some of you have wisely guessed, this is an erroneous report from our present weather detector in the automatic weather station in Johnstown Castle. It works by measuring the dispersion characteristics of an infra-red beam through the air and unfortunately it occasionally can give errors due to the similarities of the dispersal curves associated with different weathers. This has been flagged as the conditions at the time (southerlies, 10 deg C) wouldn't be associated with snowfall, and it won't enter the official climate records.

We are aware of it and we are working with Vaisala, the manufacturers of the sensor, to address it. Please accept our apologies for the misleading information.

Danno

Thanks for verifying it ME, as a matter of interest, could you explain further to us the class of equipment used at your AWS sites.

Any chance some of the Davis gear in use?

kerry1960

Danno wrote: »

Thanks for verifying it ME, as a matter of interest, could you explain further to us the class of equipment used at your AWS sites.

Any chance some of the Davis gear in use?

Interesting question Danno , i eagerly await the reply :rolleyes:.

octo

kerry1960 wrote: »

Interesting question Danno , i eagerly await the reply :rolleyes:.

Could you explain the sarcasm? I don't get it.

Redsunset

octo wrote: »

Could you explain the sarcasm? I don't get it.

Don't think there's sarcasm there octo.

i think danno's system is powered by Davis so there prob just curious as do any of the stations use similar or same.

MetEireann

Danno wrote: »

Thanks for verifying it ME, as a matter of interest, could you explain further to us the class of equipment used at your AWS sites.

Any chance some of the Davis gear in use?

Hi Danno

We don't use Davis equipment although we occasionally get requests for recommendations of home and school met equipment, and we always recommend Davis as the brand to look for.

I've attached an informal description below from last year describing some of the work our instruments unit do in installing automatic weather stations.

Joe Public

I think it's official this time:-

LATEST IRISH WEATHER REPORTS
ON 28-NOV-2009 for 20:00

Location Wind Weather Temp Humidity Rain Pressure

GURTEEN(A) N 06 SNOW SHOWER 0 99 Trace 991



Knock is lacking a bit on current detail lately so how does it fare with the "M.T. rule book"?

DOCARCH

Gurteen has been reporting snow grains or snow showers most of the day. Because this station is automatic, these are not actually observed conditions. Probably due to fog and/or freezing fog.

Posters in the vicinity elswhere have reported no snow.

octo

DOCARCH wrote: »

Gurteen has been reporting snow grains or snow showers most of the day. Because this station is automatic, these are not actually observed conditions. Probably due to fog and/or freezing fog.

Posters in the vicinity elswhere have reported no snow.

I'd leave it up to the judges, but I wouldn't trust any snow report from Gurteen.

M.T. Cranium

I'll make enquiries, the question is not whether it snowed somewhere or not, but whether a station reported it or not, so it becomes a question of whether Met Eireann accepts any given possible snow report from a station as being real. Part of my thinking about this contest is to choose questions that I can score easily on the fly when the month ends so that I can report scores within 2-3 days, so when I inherited this little project in February I had to get some data confirmed by the kind people at Met E's headquarters, as the questions otherwise would not have been answerable until the detailed monthly weather bulletin came out maybe in April or May (the briefer summary gives me the raw material I need and otherwise I try for questions that I can verify myself from the website on the day of the event.)

With this snow event, I figured there would be a clear-cut case obvious to everyone, but two things have intervened. One is that Knock, a likely suspect for early snow, has stopped reporting weather types on the hourly obs on the website. The other is that we have had a plethora of marginal cases where people saw it snowing here or there and probably near some official weather station, but not one that actually says this on the website. For example, several people yesterday reported snow in Abbeyleix (from memory, this may need correcting) and I would guess that is not a million miles from Oak Park but I didn't see any reports of snow other than Gurteen which I suspect to be just foggy snow grains or freezing drizzle leaving a trace amount -- I am not sure how to classify that kind of marginal event when it's the only one showing up. I am hoping for a more decisive snowfall report today, because from what I recall of the guesses, that would not change any scores very much if any.

Any other opinions and input welcome, of course. This is all for fun and a bit of learning (mostly by me as it would appear from the scores). :cool:

M.T. Cranium

I have the basic numbers from the met.ie website (November monthly summary) and they are:

(1) monthly mean 7.8 C

(2) highest for the month 15.0 C (21st, Casement)

(3) lowest for the month -2.9 C (28th, Claremorris)

I am coming to the conclusion that there were no official reports of snow but I am attempting to confirm this. Until I do that, I won't be able to score the month, so it may be a day or two until the scores appear, not in this thread but in the "annual forecast comp" thread.

M.T. Cranium

After conferring with our mystery guest (Met E) it is now official ... no snowfall reported is the right answer ... probably my bad for choosing such an ambiguous question given the nature of the reporting network vs the Boards observing network, etc etc ... but it's only ten points and I have otherwise managed to avoid ambiguous questions all year so I beg your collective indulgence.

I can now start scoring the November forecasts and the results of that will be found in the annual scoring thread some time later today, I hope.