March 2020 C.E.T. and EWP forecast contests

[snowray]

17 minutes ago, DAVID SNOW said:

Stewards enquiry required. ha.

No adjustment down then, I thoughts 6.5c was favorite having calculated the final figure as 6.7c before any adjustments.

[Kirkcaldy Weather]

[summer blizzard]

CET was 6.7C to the 15th so it seems the second half was the same as the first. The second half cooler relative to average but not in nominal terms. 

[mb018538]

Ahhh why did I change from 7 to 7.5c! Thought the unsettled spell would last longer. Not bad to be 0.8 out again though, right ball park at least.

[DR(S)NO]

On 25/03/2020 at 21:45, DR(S)NO said:

Should’ve kept that 6.0c guess rather than putting up to 7.0c

Lol

turns out I was actually better off!!

Really looked like it was going to be nearer to 6c

[Don]

4 hours ago, DR(S)NO said:

Lol

turns out I was actually better off!!

Really looked like it was going to be nearer to 6c

I know, this time last week, it looked like March could finish in the low 6’s.  I was also expecting final figure around 6.5.  However, meant my 7.5C was a little closer!

[Weather-history]

11 hours ago, Roger J Smith said:

From the table of entries, in preparation for the expected confirmation of a value in the mid 6 range ...

6.2 __ 68.0 __ BLAST FROM THE PAST (57,12.5)

 

And only 6 days before they went for 4.0C

Forgive me but that does not instil confidence in long range forecasts if they can change a prediction for a month  by that much in less than a week. 

 

[DAVID SNOW]

4 minutes ago, Weather-history said:

And only 6 days before they went for 4.0C

Forgive me but that does not instil confidence in long range forecasts if they can change a prediction for a month  by that much in less than a week. 

 

Met office do it all the time with their flip flopping longer outlook.

[damianslaw]

Was expecting a more marked downward adjustment given the number of cold clear nights we had.

[DAVID SNOW]

4 minutes ago, damianslaw said:

Was expecting a more marked downward adjustment given the number of cold clear nights we had.

Not wishing to create any sort of argument in here, but imo their final figure is wrong.

[Mapantz]

14 minutes ago, damianslaw said:

Was expecting a more marked downward adjustment given the number of cold clear nights we had.

There were a lot of sub-zero nights/mornings here, but the daytime temps were enough to make the averages for those days (and they were quite a lot of them) pretty close to the CET. I expect the same occurred for official measurements?! I think its correct.

[cheeky_monkey]

Finished here at -8.6c which is a juicy 6.1c below normal ..April has started massively below normal as well

[snowray]

15 minutes ago, Mapantz said:

There were a lot of sub-zero nights/mornings here, but the daytime temps were enough to make the averages for those days (and they were quite a lot of them) pretty close to the CET. I expect the same occurred for official measurements?! I think its correct.

It's the last three days of March though, not as cold as what we expected by any means but we lost those high daytime temps of 14-17c of previous days, temps were more like 6-10c, it even snowed in some places on Sunday, with night time frosts. That's where we should should have seen a fall in the CET resulting in a final figure of 6.4/6.5c after any adjustments.

For some reason there was no final adjustment down for March.

Strange one this.

Edited April 1, 2020 by snowray

[Mapantz]

2 minutes ago, snowray said:

For some reason there was no final adjustment down for March.

Because it didn't need one?

Scorcher quite rightly pointed out, far too many people on here employing their own guesswork as to whether temps should be marked up or down. Unless you're working for Hadley, you don't get all of the information.

[snowray]

Just now, Mapantz said:

Because it didn't need one?

Scorcher quite rightly pointed out, far too many people on here employing their own guesswork as to whether temps should be marked up or down. Unless you're working for Hadley, you don't get all of the information.

I certainly agree with you there, from time to times there's no adjustment down.

[Roger J Smith]

Well there was a slight downward correction, the provisional average is 6.75 and the final one is 6.70. Not sure if that 6.75 would have been reported as 6.8 or 6.7. The final few days were just about as cool as we might have expected but the average had reached 6.9 so I think the outcome was expected, it was just the downward correction came in less than it often does. No frontal passages late in days though, that has always seemed to be a source of later corrections as they calibrate to the 24-hour day. Anyway, the salient point is that once JeffC posted first, nobody managed to improve on his guess and with the higher outcome I think that moves "best combined" over to his table from Blast, will check into that tomorrow when they confirm a provisional 58 mm for EWP (if they do). But I will have to check this out, his 70 mm is only around 20th in EWP however it doesn't look like anyone closer in EWP was anywhere near the top of CET. Actually the 1990-2019 averages beat all of us, probably also the 1981-2010 averages. That's rather unusual for a combined forecast. 

The value of 6.7 prevents 2019-20 from socially distancing itself from those two other winters (1787-88 and 1922-23) that were tied second in the overall futility sweepstakes (total range Nov to Mar 0.9 C). If you missed that post, this is now only the second time Jan, Feb and Mar have been six point something, the only other time was 1846. 

And one final factoid -- with the lowest CET now likely to be December's 5.8 (April could in theory come in lower but wouldn't put much money on that), for the winter half-year the minimum CET ties 2006-07 (Feb 5.8) as the highest on record since 1685-1686 when the readings were rounded to nearest 0.5 and that winter's Dec and Feb were both 6.0. We edged past 2013-14 (Jan 5.7) into this shabby tie for second place. The previous to 2007 futility mark in what you might call the age of precision was set in 1833-34 when Feb limped in at 5.6 and also 1922-23 when Jan-Feb were both 5.6. ... So our ancestors have known this kind of winter too. They might not have been that unhappy to see one either. (encouraging facts, 2007+4 = 2010-11, 1834+4 = 1837-38). 

I think we are all happy to send off the winter of 2019-20 however defined (astronomical includes part of March) to the retirement home, punishment wing. Or were we the ones punished? 

Edited April 1, 2020 by Roger J Smith

[Scorcher]

1 hour ago, damianslaw said:

Was expecting a more marked downward adjustment given the number of cold clear nights we had.

I hear this every time...but there is no way of knowing as the running mean is a different set of stations to the final figure- so although there does tend to be a downward correction, there is no actual way of knowing as we don't have the data from the official stations before the end of the month.

I tell people this most months but it seems to fall on dear ears! I contacted the Met Office a number of years back who told me this.

So cold nights are not a guarantee of a big downward correction.

[Roger J Smith]

EWP ends up at 58 mm as expected, scroll back a few days to see the provisional standings in the EWP contest.

Will be updating more precisely on the 5th when they clarify the exact number. 

[Methuselah]

12 hours ago, Mapantz said:

Because it didn't need one?

Scorcher quite rightly pointed out, far too many people on here employing their own guesswork as to whether temps should be marked up or down. Unless you're working for Hadley, you don't get all of the information.

I agree with you, Mapantz...The way I understand things, cloudless weather will invariably result in a downward adjustment, during the winter months; in the summer, the opposite will often be true; but, around the time of the equinoxes, the one effect tends to cancel-out the other...?

[mb018538]

44 minutes ago, General Cluster said:

I agree with you, Mapantz...The way I understand things, cloudless weather will invariably result in a downward adjustment, during the winter months; in the summer, the opposite will often be true; but, around the time of the equinoxes, the one effect tends to cancel-out the other...?

Most of the time that’s not far off. We had a lot of days around 14c with minima around 0 to -2c, which still gives 6-7c daily readings. In winter and spring you still need mild sw’erlies to give mild days and mild nights to boost the cet really high.

[Walsall Wood Snow]

At 6.7c March 2020 shares the same mean CET with March's:

1801

1854

1874

1894

1896

1902

1978

1993

2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[summer blizzard]

While i'm pleased that we finally got close to average after the long winter i was unfortunately still about a degree too warm so the month was not good for my competition prospects. 

As an aside when J or Rodger produce the results can they also go back to PDF, whatever they used last time is not something my Ipad likes.

[J10]

Files

There is still an issue with file naming convention. However if you click open with, they both should work with Excel, and Adobe respectively.

Excel Mar 20 CET.xlsx

PDF (of Summary page) March 2020.pdf

Monthly
4 players got it spot on this month.

JeffC, Dancerwithwings, Norrance and J10

Seasonal
The same top 4 as above with Weather-history in 5th.

Overall

The top 4 is

Dancerwithwings (from 3rd)
Stationary Front (still 2nd)
Timmytour (from 9th)
mb018538 (from 1st)

Edited April 2, 2020 by J10

[JeffC]

On 01/04/2020 at 11:33, Summer Sun said:

March confirmed as 6.7c

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/mly_cet_mean_sort.txt

 

4 winners for March
 

@JeffC @Dancerwithwings @Norrance @J10

Ye Gods and little fishes!

[Roger J Smith]

In terms of best combined forecast, as I was saying the best EWP forecasts were all wide of the CET mark, so JeffC takes that as well with his 17th place EWP combined with top CET (18 points), second place was DAVID SNOW who was 15th EWP and 13th CET (28 points) then B87 and Blast from the Past -- but nobody outperformed our most recent 30-year average in this combined category (if we take their CET rank as equal to first in at their level, 1990-2019 was 5th in CET and 6th in EWP, total 11 points). 

Well done JeffC and recent average.