See, look, I made a Google Form for you and your students to use. How to collect the data? Well, Google Forms makes it nice and easy to record data. And thankfully, if you’re teaching Algebra 1, a lot of curriculum maps out there don’t have the “Statistics” unit until late in the year. Yes, the 45-day forecasts won’t start paying dividends for a couple months, but that’ll be some pretty rich data (“rich” has a couple different meanings in this case) to have collected. Grab the highs and lows, and possibly recorded rainfall.

Compare it to the recorded data (you could stick a max/min recording thermometer out your window, or check archived data). Keep track of the 2-, 3-, 5-, 7-, and shoot, the ridiculous AccuWeather 45-day forecasts. does, say, a dry climate have more error than a wet climate? do the coasts have more forecast error than the plains?)? Can we quantify any of this? How accurate do you think weather forecasts are? Do you think a 2-day forecast is appreciably more accurate than a 5-day forecast? Do you think it depends on the region you’re checking (i.e. Which weather forecast models are more accurate for your region?.Is there a regional difference in weather forecast error?.Is a 2-day forecast error prone? What about a 7-day? At what point to weather forecasts become statistically useless?.To me, the more interesting questions are as follows. So that’s the silly portion of this blog post. Presently, I cannot quantify how terrible these forecasts will be, but they will be terrible. It will predict the highs, lows, and chance of precipitation up to 45 days in advance. Seriously, AccuWeather? Yes, AccuWeather is releasing a 45-day weather “forecast”, although it’s actually just more of a trendline (it will be colder in October than it is now in August, probably a safe bet). It’s a shame because the following Monday (September 9) shows a mostly sunny day, with a high of 77 degrees. I’ve got bad news for everyone here in the Fort Collins area: there’s a chance of showers on Labor Day (September 2).

Weather chicago 7 day forecast