Challening the Humans

After some hard work and long days last week, my weather forecast model is finally running on its own and producing daily forecasts for Cape Hatteras, NC.

Yesterday was the first day of the WxChallenge national forecasting contest, a 7-month competition among weather forecasters. The participants include approximately 1300 students and faculty from over 60 universities across the U.S. and Canada (including my alma mater SJSU and OU). We forecast for a new place every two weeks, starting with Cape Hatteras. Points are awarded according to the accuracy of the forecasts.

I'm not personally a contestant, but my model is participating along with the government models and the National Weather Service. My goals are to beat most of the other models and improve as the competition goes along. But it sure would be nice to be up there with the human forecasters. One of the reasons meteorologists get paid is because they can forecast better than models alone. If the USL Model can play at the same level as some of the best human forecasters in North America, it would be very exciting.

posted by Matt @ 4:31 PM