News

03.09.05

Study Reveals Incredible Accuracy of CustomWeather's Precipitation Forecasts

SAN-FRANCISCO, USA, March 9, 2005
A comprehensive study on the accuracy of probability of precipitation (POP) forecasts by ForecastWatch.com, a service of Intellovations, LLC, has revealed that CustomWeather, Inc. has a near-perfect record when it comes to precipitation forecasting for the 1-5 day forecasting period. With nearly 1.5 million forecasts from 839 U.S. weather stations analyzed, ForecastWatch.com showed that the average error for the 1-5 day period between CustomWeather's forecasts and the actual recorded probability of precipitation was only 3.51 percentage points. The study ran from February 2004 until January 2005 and was one of the most comprehensive studies of its kind.

"What is amazing about the results is that CustomWeather came within 3.51 percentage points of perfection for probability of precipitation forecasting for 1-5 days out while the National Weather Service won't even attempt to forecast anything better than a multiple of ten for ONE day out." said Geoff Flint, President & CEO of CustomWeather, Inc.. "The old myth that weather forecasters simply state a slight chance or rain to cover all bases simply does not apply to CustomWeather."

The error between CustomWeather's forecast and the actual probability of precipitation dipped as low as 0.12 percentage points at 80% and never rose above an error of 5.53%. In other words, when CustomWeather stated that there was an 80% chance of rain, it did in fact rain 80.12% of the time according to the study. When CustomWeather stated a 50% chance of rain, it did in fact rain 53.96% of the time. This kind of correlation out to five days is almost unheard of in the weather industry.

Another study performed one year ago that focused solely on temperature forecasts found that CustomWeather's website, MyForecast.com, had more accurate temperature forecasts over a five day period than all major competitors in the study including the National Weather Service (see 2003 study at: http://www.customweather.com/accuracy/2003study.html). The latest findings regarding CustomWeather's probability of precipitation forecasts lends further credence to the true accuracy of CustomWeather forecasts. For more information on the latest study, please visit http://www.customweather.com/accuracy/2004_POP_study.html, or download the statistics at http://www.customweather.com/accuracy/2004_POP_table.pdf.