Fantasy Forecast is designed to help individuals become more interested in weather by providing a forecasting competition that will help you learn how to forecast and test your skills among your friends and peers. With this weekly competition, you will be ranked according to your age classification. Those that rank among the top will be awarded prizes. A friendly competition to keep you aware of what's going on in the weather and learn more about the science.

Participants will be divided based on age. A forecasting season will be announced (example: 12 week period) to begin the forecast contest. Each week a designated date will be determined. (Every Thursday). At the beginning of the week, a location will be announced to determine where the participant will forecast for (example: Los Angeles, California). The participant will need to enter in their forecast for that specified location before 12 AM on the forecast date. Participants will be required to enter three values: Forecast for High Temperature, Low Temperature, and precipitation amount (range). Once entered, the forecast values will be compared to the actual observations realized on the forecast date. The participant will then be ranked according to other participants' scores based on accuracy.

You will see rankings for the top weekly scores as well as the accumulative scores through the forecast season.

Scoring:

Each forecast has a maximum of fifteen points that can be awarded (five for each of the three forecast variables). If verification falls within the forecaster’s range, the equation below is used to determine points awarded.

In the equation above, P is the points awarded for the variable, α is a constant multiplier (0.5 for the high and low temperature, and 10 for precipitation), U is the forecaster’s upper bound, and L is the forecaster’s lower bound. If the verification falls outside the forecaster’s range, zero points are awarded. If the verification falls inside the forecaster’s range, points are subtracted at 0.5 times the range for the temperature, and 10 times the range of the accumulated precipitation.

• High temperature: Minimum 81, Maximum 85
• Low temperature: Minimum 62, Maximum 64
• Precipitation: Minimum 0.06”, Maximum 0.24”

Let’s say that verification for all three forecast variables fell within the ranges above. The forecaster would receive:

• 5 – 0.5 (85 – 81) = 3 points for high temperature forecast
• 5 – 0.5 (64 – 62) = 4 points for low temperature forecast
• 5 – 10 (0.24 – 0.06) = 3.2 points for precipitation forecast

Thus, the forecaster receives a total of 3 + 4 + 3.2 = 10.2 points. Unlike other forecast contests, points are good. Note that in order to receive 15 points, a forecaster would have to make a perfect deterministic forecast for each variable!

The forecaster should never input a range more than 5/α (10°F for the temperature, 0.5” for the precipitation) since that will guarantee zero points. Therefore, there is incentive not to forecast too large of a range every time, but also incentive not to be overconfident since a deterministic forecast is a very high risk forecast.

Missed Forecasts:

If a forecaster misses a forecast day, zero points are awarded.

-- select station -- Fox13

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