Snowfall contest for Feb 22-23 ... deadline for entries 06z Feb 22nd (0100h EST)

[Roger Smith]

Predict the snowfall totals for Feb 22 and 23 (as reported in CF6 documents) for the five local sites (NYC, LGA, ISP, JFK, EWR). 

Entries received after 0100h Sunday (06z 22nd) will not count and will not be scored. You may edit your original posts up to that deadline, I will not create a table of forecasts until 06z so I won't need any notification of edits made. By 07z I should have the table completed so any edits after that point will not count either.  

It would speed things up for me if you listed your five predictions in the order shown (NYC, LGA, ISP, JFK, EWR) but I will be on the lookout for predictions in a different order. Add any comments you want to add, about regional maximum values and amounts at other locations; these will have no bearing on contest scoring though. 

Forecasts to nearest tenth of an inch (storm total 22nd-23rd, any snow reported for 21st or 24th will not count towards contest). Forecasts in whole inches will be converted to decimal. 

Contest scoring will be done by an error-squared method to reward consistently good forecasts. If your errors were 1, 3, 2, 4, 6, your error squared total would be 1+9+4+16+36 = 66. As a secondary contest report value, I will also compare error totals (simple addition). We'll see if that makes any difference to the rankings. It usually does to some extent. 

The only tiebreaker will be best low error. If your total is the same as another entry, it goes to which entry has the lower maximum error (squared will be same as unsquared in this case). 

I may add some model predictions and NWS official forecasts if I can identify them accurately enough. Their rankings will not affect your rankings.

Good luck.  

(note: it seems unlikely but in the event of a total event cancel over all guidance, the contest will be declared null and void before deadline)

[Roger Smith]

I will start this off with 

NYC 16.5

LGA 17.0

ISP 23.9

JFK 14.5

EWR 19.8