Each year around Halloween, WTAE, WPXI, and KDKA all publish their Winter Weather Outlooks. Each forecast includes an average temperature and a season total snowfall based on long-term modeling and meteorological trends.<\/p>\n

Which forecast (if any) of the three should you take seriously? We have collected and analyzed the Winter Weather Outlooks\u00a0from each network for the past eight winters, comparing each forecast total snowfall with the official total archived by the National Weather Service. Over that period, the three networks have seen similar success, but KDKA has been the best overall with a historical average percent error of 26%, just barely beating out WTAE.\u00a0A table of each station\u2019s percent error by year, and a graph of their predictions against the actual season snowfall totals are included below.<\/p>\n

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KDKA: 44 inches<\/strong><\/p>\n

Average Historical Percent Error: 26%<\/em><\/p>\n

In what is the most bizarre Winter Weather Outlook we have ever seen, KDKA’s Ray Petelin did something very unusual and did not put numbers to his forecast. Instead, we were left with a vague prediction of “above normal” snowfall for this season (the average seasonal snowfall<\/a> for Pittsburgh is 41.4″). Later, Ray dove deeper into his outlook with a lengthy video published to Facebook where he indeed did<\/em> publish a snowfall total prediction of 44 inches – so that is what we will use here.\u00a0KDKA was very accurate last year (and two out of four years before that) with Jeff Verszyla at the helm, so it will be interesting to see if the station’s success continues with the new crew.<\/p>\n