Snow Contest January 25th-26th

[mulen]

Port St. Lucie 0.0 guaranteed lol

[jaysoner]

New York City: 2.5"

Boston: 14.5"

Philadelphia: 2.5

Washington DC: 1.5"

Hartford: 13"

Albany: 19.5"

Your city: Hackensack, NJ: 3"

[donsutherland1]

New York City: 9.1"

Boston: 17.0"

Philadelphia: 7.5"

Washington DC: 7.5"

Hartford: 15.0"

Albany: 18.2"

[mob1]

On 1/24/2026 at 7:19 PM, donsutherland1 said:

New York City: 9.1"

Boston: 17.0"

Philadelphia: 7.5"

Washington DC: 7.5"

Hartford: 15.0"

Albany: 18.2"

We'll see once the final numbers come in, but this looks like a solid call. 

The one immediately above it though, lol. 

[WeatherGeek2025]

1 hour ago, mob1 said:

We'll see once the final numbers come in, but this looks like a solid call. 

The one immediately above it though, lol. 

Jayson's is disqualified 

[NEG NAO]

18 hours ago, WeatherGeek2025 said:

So what were the NWS final totals for each location ?

[psv88]

Who won?

[WeatherGeek2025]

we gotta find out the totals @donsutherland1 @dendriteyou know the totals for these cities you guys are major contributors here

[donsutherland1]

2 minutes ago, WeatherGeek2025 said:

we gotta find out the totals @donsutherland1 @dendriteyou know the totals for these cities you guys are major contributors here

Totals aren't yet available for a number of locations. We'll see this evening after today's snowfall amounts are added in for some of the sites.

[jm1220]

16 minutes ago, WeatherGeek2025 said:

we gotta find out the totals @donsutherland1 @dendriteyou know the totals for these cities you guys are major contributors here

Boston probably still has a couple inches to go today/tonight. 

[Roger Smith]

BOS was past 19 inches last time they reported so I am hopeful of a W for BOS and that's the big highlight for my participation. I think final numbers will look something like 

NYC 11.5

BOS 20

BDL 16.5

ALB 12

PHL 9.3

DCA 6.9

[CPcantmeasuresnow]

3 hours ago, psv88 said:

Who won?

Better yet, how do we calculate who won?
 

Is this like the price is right and any guesses that went over are disqualified? Or are we just taking the total deviation from predicted amounts from the actual and adding up the total for all six cities for each participant? I'm not sure who's doing that.

[Roger Smith]

Two recognized methods for snowfall contests are sum of errors or sum of errors squared (which tends to be closer to correlation co-efficient). 

It's often a similar but not exactly same order of finish using those two methods. As Don and perhaps a few others here will know, DonSutherland has a very good record in even larger snowfall contests that ran for many winters on another site, and disappeared (sadly) this winter. In storm forecasts DonS has often been either top or top three in a field of 20-25 entries. I have had a much more variable record in the same contests but I did nail the Blizzard of 1888. Well 2010, one of those snowmageddon ones. And Nemo, or Juno (get them confused). But I have finished dead last a few times as well. Don is rarely out of the top third, maybe even never. There are many pros who don't know 10% of what Don knows. 

We have an annual snowfall contest over at the temperature forecast contest thread (main forum, nobody knows it's there) ... Don does well in those too, so does wxallannj who is a member here I believe, also RJay, hudsonvalley21, BKViking, dmillz25 from here (apologies if I missed anyone). Other Am-wx people with good track records in contests would include RodneyS, Tom, StormchaserChuck and wxdude64, plus Scotty Lightning who was once SD. Last year in particular so_whats_happening was very close to top. Various others who used to be great like Mallow, Stebo, DIT, Isotherm ... have dropped out over the years, in some cases probably because the NYC crew kept kicking their butts. The Mid-Atlantic forum is about on a par with NYC for contest exploits over many years.  

[Roger Smith]

In my own defense I could point out that I need to have a road atlas handy any time there's a big storm and reports pouring in, I have no earthly idea where most places without a professional sports franchise might be located. 

(just saw on NE thread that BOS passed 20.2" recently and it's still hammering down there)

[WeatherGeek2025]

56 minutes ago, Roger Smith said:

In my own defense I could point out that I need to have a road atlas handy any time there's a big storm and reports pouring in, I have no earthly idea where most places without a professional sports franchise might be located. 

(just saw on NE thread that BOS passed 20.2" recently and it's still hammering down there)

the closest to the winner like if it's 2 inches over or under that counts as +2 points..let's say you predicted Boston to get 18 inches and it got 20 or 16, your total score is +2 points

You want the least amount of points.

 

Lets get these numbers and hopefully we can do it again for the next storm if it hits.

[Roger Smith]

Okay, I can post the numbers from climate summaries (the last one we need shows up soon after midnight). It will be the total snowfall for 25th-26th as shown in climate summaries and where possible on CF6 forms too. Your scoring system is basically total of absolute errors, should probably be to decimal places as results and some forecasts have a decimal involved. But whatever it will work out the same probably. As to the forecasts for "your location" some of those would involve taking a forum report, a few can be verified the same way as above. But likely you wouldn't include them in scoring, right? 

[WeatherGeek2025]

1 minute ago, Roger Smith said:

Okay, I can post the numbers from climate summaries (the last one we need shows up soon after midnight). It will be the total snowfall for 25th-26th as shown in climate summaries and where possible on CF6 forms too. Your scoring system is basically total of absolute errors, should probably be to decimal places as results and some forecasts have a decimal involved. But whatever it will work out the same probably. As to the forecasts for "your location" some of those would involve taking a forum report, a few can be verified the same way as above. But likely you wouldn't include them in scoring, right? 

i think your location should be discarded that was mostly just for fun but the major cities i think is cool. And maybe we can throw in a reward for winning like a small crypto reward or something i'm interested in chipping in as a  tournament fee if you will. We could always continue these into rain events and wind events and heat days and so on

[Roger Smith]

If we're going pro, I am going to be Don's caddy. 

[hudsonvalley21]

24 minutes ago, Roger Smith said:

If we're going pro, I am going to be Don's caddy. 

 

[WeatherGeek2025]

 

Central Park 11.5

Boston: 20.2"

Hartford: 17.3"

Philadelphia 9.3

Albany?

Dc?

[Roger Smith]

BOS added a bit ... I see these totals for 25th-26th ...

BOS 23.2" _ I think they are done now but as that is above all forecasts any more now to morning would be irrelevant to contest results

BDL 17.3"

ALY 12.6"

PHL 9.3"

DCA 6.9" _ the DC folk say this is undermeasured so I would not be too surprised to see a revision before too long, to 8 or 9 inches possibly. BWI had 11.3"

NYC 11.4" _ where was the undermeasure when I needed it, huh? 

------------------

also ORH 22.4" (missed it by 0.3" my bad) and ABE 11.8" ... EWR 11.7" ... ISP 13.2"

[Roger Smith]

4 hours ago, hudsonvalley21 said:

 

That's the other guy's caddy.

 

[Roger Smith]

I did a quick look through the forecasts now that I know the outcomes and it looks like a close fight among a number of you, including our contest host, for lowest aggregate error. 

My blunder to say PHL 3.7" plus a lot of sleet, of course that was probably true except the sleet should be in the total too. Duh. KP for BOS however. 

A lot of us thought Albany would exceed 12.6" -- going back into charts to make sure they haven't revised that one.

[donsutherland1]

20 hours ago, Roger Smith said:

BOS added a bit ... I see these totals for 25th-26th ...

BOS 23.2" _ I think they are done now but as that is above all forecasts any more now to morning would be irrelevant to contest results

BDL 17.3"

ALY 12.6"

PHL 9.3"

DCA 6.9" _ the DC folk say this is undermeasured so I would not be too surprised to see a revision before too long, to 8 or 9 inches possibly. BWI had 11.1"

NYC 11.4" _ where was the undermeasure when I needed it, huh? 

------------------

also ORH 22.4" (missed it by 0.3" my bad) and ABE 11.8" ... EWR 11.7" ... ISP 13.2"

BWI finished at 11.3".

[Roger Smith]

Not sure if our host is working on scoring results, I had a look at all entries, these were lowest totals I found

(if you are not in this unofficial list, your total error was >20"):

(no guarantees of this list matching official contest results)

1. Digityman _____________ 9.3

2. GregRups21 ___________ 10.9

3. WeatherGeek2025 ____ 11.7

4. LVBlizzard ____________ 12.7

t5. BRSno, snywx ________ 13.7

7. GATECH ______________ 14.5

8. JM1220 ______________ 14.7

9. CPCantmeasuresnow_ 16.0 (using entry of measured 8.5 CP, would be 14.3 using entry of actual 10.2 CP)

10. hudsonvalley21 ______ 16.5

11. RJay _________________ 18.0

12. Don Sutherland ______ 18.8

13. Neg NAO _____________19.1

14. Snowlover11 _________20.0

15. powpow ____________ 20.1

=======================

(rest are 20.1 +) (RS was 21.8 despite lowest error BOS)

x. TriPol _________________ 20.9 _ note this entry has 0 for PHL if that was a typo the total would have been less (in this calculation it is 9.3" of the total)

(this entry would be 4th if the 0 for PHL was meant to be 9, or 10)

NOTE: Of all entries, four were below 12.6" actual for Albany, none were above actual 23.2" for Boston. 

It appears that Hartford was our most accurate consensus forecast followed by DC, generally too low for PHL and NYC and too high for ALY