By Scott Martin
It has been a while since I have done a forecast verification for an event. Being a full-time college student while being a stay-at-home dad teaching homeschool to three children takes a lot of time away, but I really do enjoy it. I was able to squeeze in a little extra time today to do a verification for the Trans Am series at NOLA Motorsports Park from this past weekend, and here are the results.
As you can see, I was pretty close to being dead-on for most of the forecast. Where I struggled is underestimating the cold air that came with a cold front on late Friday evening. A north wind helped to keep high temperatures lower on Saturday as I forecasted temps to be warmer. It was not a big miss (less than 5 degrees), but did have one forecasted high 6 degrees too warm. I also didn't expect temperatures to warm as much for Friday before the cold front moved through, but was only off by 4 degrees and less. Now there was no doubt that precipitation would stay out of NOLA, and I forecasted a 0% chance throughout the time frame. I did think that there would have been a slight chance of rain with the front passage early on Saturday morning on my first forecast, but changed that to none due to the fact that models were trending dry and moisture was staying well to the north.
Most meteorologists would claim this as a very successful forecast, and as a meteorology student, I consider it one as well. I still see that I need to work in some areas. A perfect forecast is nearly impossible, but my goal is to have as many of those slots to be in the green.
Our next forecast will be for the Trans Am series action at COTA in November (6-8), and then at Daytona (12-14). After that, our last forecast will be for the 25 Hours of Thunderhill in December.
As you can see, I was pretty close to being dead-on for most of the forecast. Where I struggled is underestimating the cold air that came with a cold front on late Friday evening. A north wind helped to keep high temperatures lower on Saturday as I forecasted temps to be warmer. It was not a big miss (less than 5 degrees), but did have one forecasted high 6 degrees too warm. I also didn't expect temperatures to warm as much for Friday before the cold front moved through, but was only off by 4 degrees and less. Now there was no doubt that precipitation would stay out of NOLA, and I forecasted a 0% chance throughout the time frame. I did think that there would have been a slight chance of rain with the front passage early on Saturday morning on my first forecast, but changed that to none due to the fact that models were trending dry and moisture was staying well to the north.
Most meteorologists would claim this as a very successful forecast, and as a meteorology student, I consider it one as well. I still see that I need to work in some areas. A perfect forecast is nearly impossible, but my goal is to have as many of those slots to be in the green.
Our next forecast will be for the Trans Am series action at COTA in November (6-8), and then at Daytona (12-14). After that, our last forecast will be for the 25 Hours of Thunderhill in December.
