Every year in late October, the three local stations\u00a0publish their Winter Weather Outlooks, predicting the snowfall and average temperature for each month. A forecast pioneered by local weather icon Joe DeNardo, this annual tradition pits weather team vs. weather team in a quest for the most accurate predictions.<\/p>\n

We have collected and analyzed the Winter Weather Outlooks\u00a0from each network for the past five winters.\u00a0Our analysis compares each network’s\u00a0forecast total snowfall with the official total snowfall archived by the National Weather Service. A table of each station’s percent error by year, and a graph of their predictions against the actual season snowfall totals are listed below. Each network is also given an A-F letter grade based on their average accuracy of all five winter.<\/p>\n

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WPXI (Grade: D, 67.25%)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pittsburgh’s NBC affiliate was spot on in 2014-15, predicting 47.5″ of snow in a winter that totaled 48.5″ – a one inch difference for just a 2% error. That was by far the best forecast of any of the stations over any of the five winters, but unfortunately Channel 11 struggled mightily to correctly predict the other four winters.<\/p>\n