The contest will begin next week, so if anyone hasn’t joined yet, you will have until next Tuesday (March 9th) to jump in.

Here are the rules. Please comment if you have any questions.

At first, we will forecast for only one day. If everyone is interested in adding more days in the future, we can discuss that in the comments. We’ll forecast for Wednesdays, so the forecast will be due by 11:00 p.m. each Tuesday, however you can forecast as early as you’d like. Also, say you forecast Monday, but change your mind by Tuesday, you can resubmit your forecast. I ask that you try not to resubmit several times each week, but if you would like to update your forecast, I will always take the latest forecast, just make sure you let me know you are resubmitting.

The forecast will include high and low temperatures, along with precipitation and type.

A few notes on temperature. Keep in mind, the official high and low temperatures will be taken from the National Weather Service. If you check out this link you will see that the high and low temperatures are for a 24 hour period from 23:53 to 23:53 (or simply put from midnight to midnight until the time change). This means the high temperature is not necessary the afternoon temperature and the low temperatures may not be the morning temperatures. I’m sure a lot of people can recall days we the highs were reached early in the morning and temperatures fell throughout the day. So, again, we are forecasting high and low, not necessarily always the morning and afternoon temperatures.

The precipitation forecast will be based on liquid, for all types of precipitation (rain, snow, ice, etc.) This number will also come from the National Weather Service like the high and low temperatures. If you think there is a chance for precipitation, you will pick a category the correspond with the amount of precipitation you expect.

Here are the precipitation categories:

0= no precipitation to a trace.
1= 0.01″ to 0.09″
2= 0.10″ to 0.19″
3= 0.20″ to 0.39″
4= 0.40″ to 0.75″
5- 0.75″ or more

If you don’t think there will be any precipitation you will pick category zero. We will only forecast for rain/snow, any other winter precipitation will just go in with rain. If you think there is a chance for snow, just type snow at the end of your category. You don’t need to say how much snow or rain, by adding snow you are just saying you think there is a chance for snow at one point during the event.

Here is an example forecast. If I thought the high would be 36, the low would be 20 and there was a chance for 0.25″ of liquid precipitation, with snow changing over to rain, I would submit the following forecast: H: 36 L: 20 Cat: 3 Snow

Again, that can mean I think it will snow for the whole 0.25″ of precipitation or that I think it will snow just long enough to be reported.

If I was going to forecast a high of 70 (wouldn’t that be nice?) a low of 50 and 0.15″ of rain, I would submit the following forecast: H: 70 L: 50 Cat: 2

We will do this, again for every Wednesday, but by 11:00 p.m. Tuesday. We will also forecast for THREE locations. Kansas City, Topeka and Wichita (the three locations where the National Weather Service offices are located.)

There is a lot of information here, so please submit any questions below. I will go over scoring and what happens if you miss a forecast this week.