National Collegiate Weather Forecasting Competition
From Freepedia
The National Collegiate Weather Forecasting Competition or NCWFC is a yearly competition between colleges in the US. The competition is run by Penn State. There are over 1000 participants from about 45 institutions.
Organization
Entrants in the contest must be affiliated with a college or university, but they range in age and knowledge from undergraduates to professors. Each year, 13 cities are picked for forecasting; the current city changes every 2 weeks. Contestants forecast 4 days per week for the following day's high temperature (in Fahrenheit, low temperature, and precipitation (forecasted by category).
The precipitation categories are:
- 0 -- no precipitation or trace
- 1 -- trace - 0.05", liquid water equivalent, inclusive
- 2 -- 0.06-0.24", inclusive
- 3 -- 0.25-0.49", inclusive
- 4 -- 0.50-0.99", inclusive
- 5 -- >=1.00"
One "error" point is given for each degree of error on temperature, and 4 error points are given for each error in precipitation category.
Winners
The team from MIT has won the competition the past 5 years (2001-2005).
