Thanks to everyone who entered our “2017 Late Season Snow” contest. We briefly review the entries. Not surprisingly, most of you are less than optimistic for additional snowfall by the end of May.

In the announcement post for this contest, we offered a little insight by providing a few of Boulder’s springtime snow statistics. Close to forty of you came up with “educated” guesses for the amount of remaining snow yet to fall in Boulder’s 2016-2017 winter season.  The entries are contained in the graph below:

Late_Season_Boulder_Snow_Contest_Entries_2017

A few observations:

  • Predictions ranged from 0.5″ to 13.6″
  • The average amount of predicted snowfall for all entries was 5.8″, while the median was 4.8″. These are well below the historical average of 7.6″. Not a bad idea to “go low” considering the type of winter we’ve had so far.
  • Numerous folks put in a guess of 0″. While it is entirely possible we’ll see no more snow this year, that’s no fun for this type of contest! We explicitly stated only non-zero guesses would be accepted…mostly so there wasn’t a ten-way tie for first if it didn’t snow again! We apologize, but these entries have been disqualified.

SUMMARY OF SCORING:

Those who come closest to the actual amount of snow to fall in Boulder between April 12 and May 31, 2017 will be the winners. For verification, we’ll go off the official Boulder climate station located at the NIST building in south Boulder.

In the event that multiple entries choose the same amount, the date of last MEASURABLE snowfall will be used as the tie-breaker.

SUMMARY OF PRIZES:

For prizes, we’re giving away BoulderCAST Premium subscriptions. As a reminder, Premium members get full-access to our daily forecast discussion every morning at 5AM. This is especially useful in the winter, when our meteorologists brain-dump thoughts for days leading up to impactful snowstorms. In case you weren’t with us last winter, we did quite well for the entire Denver Metro area’s snow forecasts. Premium members also have admittance to the 24-hour version of our hourly forecast, our extended 3-day ski forecasts, gain early viewing of select content, can request custom forecasts, and have the ability to chat in real-time with other members and the BoulderCAST team on the site. Read our announcement post for more information.

The prizes for the contest are as follows:

  • 1st place: 6-month subscription to BoulderCAST Premium
  • 2nd  place: 3-month subscription to BoulderCAST Premium
  • 3rd – 5th places: 1-month subscription to BoulderCAST Premium
  • All other places: Virtual “pat on the back”

As an added bonus, if you’re already a Premium subscriber when the contest ends on May 31st, and you’re one of the winners, your prize will be doubled! All the more reason to get ready for severe weather season and sign up for Premium now!

Prizes and recognition will be awarded on or around May 31st.

For now, hope for snow…..wet sloppy snow!

Ben Castellani

Ben grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania and holds both a bachelor's and a master's degree in Meteorology, the latter being from CU Boulder. His hometown received nearly three feet of snow from the Storm of the Century back in March of 1993, sparking his initial interest in impactful weather. Ben currently works on remote sensing and data analysis software at L3Harris Technologies in Boulder.

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