Friday, February 09, 2007

Internet Weather comparison

It's a rather lengthy post (BikeBubba will like that), so here's the nut:
  • In seeking high temperature forecasts, it looked best to use IntelliCast or The Weather Channel in the long term, but there wasn't a clear leader in the short to mid term. BBC seemed unreliable in all cases, as well as MSN in the long term. The Weather Network, CNN and Unisys all had blemishes (3, 4 and 0 days in advance, respectively), but were generally in with the pack.

  • In seeking low temperature forecasts, IntelliCast and The Weather Channel were again the choice in the long term, joined by Unisys in the short term. BBC was still a dud in anything but the very short term, and MSN performed horribly in nearly all cases, as well as Accuweather in the long term.

  • Accuweather was the clear leader in anything greater than 10 days in advance, being the only site providing a weather forecast.

    In addition to the above observations/recommendations, it was clear from the correlation analysis that the further removed a weather forecast is, the less accurate it will likely be. Much more unexpectedly, however, it was also clear that predictions of the overnight low temperature are less accurate than those of the daytime high.
  • 2 comments:

    Bike Bubba said...

    Some of us just step outside, ya know.

    Mark said...

    Yeah, but the NWS prefers to do their business without the "weather window" - as seen from my office next to them in the PRB (People's Republic of Boulder).