Comparing the most popular weather forecasting services

Supporting files

The concept for this project arose from pure curiosity. Almost everyone relies on
weather forecasts to schedule their daily activities. In the world of business, many
companies, whether corporate or small and family-owned are dependent on accurate forecasts. Agriculture-based companies are especially so. Knowing how much rain their fields will receive, how hot it will get and other factors help influence decision making and ultimately lead to an improved crop yield. However, forecasts are never spot on. How much can farmers rely on forecasts to assist them in their businesses? How often do they miss the mark, and to what extent? To put it simply, how accurate are weather forecasts?
These are the questions that this project was created to answer. Three companies were chosen to evaluate based on their popularity and alleged accuracy: AccuWeather, The Weather Channel, and Dark Sky. It was hypothesized that The
Weather Channel would be the most accurate. For a period of fifty-eight days, data was collected from all three companies regarding temperature, humidity, and wind speed. After analyzing the data, it was concluded that AccuWeather produced the most accurate weather forecasts. This partially disproved the hypothesis. The Weather Channel was not as accurate as AccuWeather, but it was more accurate than Dark Sky.
Certainly, this process could be improved. However, the project still met its
predetermined objectives. Most importantly, it determined how accurate weather
forecasts are. It also left some questions unanswered. To study the topic further and
answer those questions, the data collection process could be automated and extended over a longer period of time.