BAMOS June 2017
9
Weather Tipping update
Grant Beard, Weather Tipping administrator, 23 May 2017
The first eight rounds have taken competitors to all points of the compass, with forecasts required for localities in every state and the Northern Territory. Round 9 is the ACT ' s turn at Canberra Airport.
After the first eight rounds, the official Bureau of Meteorology forecasts sit atop the ladder on 36 points, equal with Merlinde Kay in second place. In other words, the Bureau has, on average, proved unbeatable to date. It is some years since this has been the case because a successful tactic in the past has been to detect and exploit the Bureau ' s Achilles Heel, if indeed there was one. For example, extreme weather tends to be underforecast by the prediction models, so those situations are a chance to gain a few points over the Bureau.
Consistency across the three forecast elements( minimum, maximum, rainfall) is the key to scoring well. Even though the Bureau is leading overall, it is placed third for rainfall forecasts, ninth for minimum temperature forecasts and sixth for maximum temperature forecasts.
Perhaps one of the keys to the Bureau ' s success so far is how well the administrators interpret the official forecasts. For example, rainfall forecast amounts are interpreted in light of the official synoptic chart forecasts on the Bureau’ s website. The timing of rain either side of 9am on Sunday is important; this nuance is lost in the worded forecasts.
As in other years, minimum temperature seems to be the most difficult element to forecast. The spread of scores across the top eight is 10 – 15 for minimum temperature, compared with 5 – 10 for maximum temperature and 9 – 11 for rainfall.
The other places in the top eight are filled by some of the usual suspects: David Shield, Tim Eckert, Rowland Beardsell,
JohnnyChampo Pidinchedda( 2016 minor premier) and Blair Trewin( 2016 Grand Finalist) all competed in the 2016 finals.
We currently have 148 active competitors, although 12 accounts were suspended after round 5 as these individuals had failed to enter their own forecast up to that point. They had simply accepted the Default forecast, which is engineered to score 2 worse than the Bureau; it is automatically provided to those who unavoidably miss a forecast. A new policy for 2017, the account suspension is designed to remove those individuals who are unable to compete or simply choose not to for whatever reason.
The easiest forecast location was Mildura in Round 1, where a weekend of stable autumn weather saw the top 27 forecasters score 1 or 2. Ngaanyatjarra / Giles in Round 3 has proved to be the most challenging site so far, due to some wayward model guidance and the difficulty of timing a rain-band. The top 20 scores were between 5 and 7.
There were a few website-related hiccups to start the competition, the most common complaint being that registration emails were not being received. It turned out that these were going to Spam or Junk in many instances; our website tech has rectified this problem. There were some particularly anxious moments from Macquarie University students, of which there is a large cohort from the Science and Engineering Faculty. They ' re required to compete as part of their assessment.
So, all-up a successful start to the season, and we wish everyone good forecasting for the remainder.
Editor’ s Note: After 13 rounds, the Bureau is currently sitting in 5th place.