Verification of Public Weather Forecasts Available via the Media

Abstract

The question of who is the ?best? forecaster in a particular media market is one that the public frequently asks. The authors have collected approximately one year's forecasts from the National Weather Service and major media presentations for Oklahoma City. Diagnostic verification procedures indicate that the question of best does not have a clear answer. All of the forecast sources have strengths and weaknesses, and it is possible that a user could take information from a variety of sources to come up with a forecast that has more value than any one individual source provides. The analysis provides numerous examples of the utility of a distributions-oriented approach to verification while also providing insight into the problems the public faces in evaluating the array of forecasts presented to them.