Ieuan Higgs – i.higgs@pgr.reading.ac.uk
It’s a colder-than-usual, early October Friday afternoon in the PhD offices of Brian Hoskins. The week is tired, motivation is waning and most importantly – Sappo is only 30 minutes away. As the collective mind of each office meanders further and further from work, someone inevitably pipes up with:
“Has anyone done their weather game predictions this week?”
Some mutterings might move around the room – grumbling about the unpredictability of rainfall in Singapore, or a verbal jab at the cold front that decided to move across Reading about 6 hours too early – until, as predictably as ENSO, a first year cautiously asks,
“…What’s the weather game?”
Which is then met with a suitable response, such as:
“The Weather Game? It’s a bit like fantasy football, but for us weather nerds – you’re going to love it!”.
At least, that’s how I like to describe it.
The game was hotly contested this Autumn, with huge sign-up and participation across the entire term.
A particular shoutout to the Undergraduates, who were out in force and took 50% of the top 10 spots!
Plotting the cumulative scores for the top 32 players of the term, we are treated to a blindingly colourful cascade (thanks excel?) of points totals:
From this, it is clear that our eventual winner had led the pack for a solid five weeks by the competition end – although I’m sure they were a little nervous in those final two weeks. We can also see the dreaded “flatline” – players who clearly got off to a good start but then, for whatever reason, never submitted another prediction for the remainder of the game. Another interesting feature of these plots is the occasional downward bump – a symptom of the dreaded negative score, which were (thankfully) relatively few and far between.
The illustrious awards ceremony was held in WCD on the 8th of December. Category winners were treated to a bar of tasty chocolate, and the overall winner was gifted a delightful little ThermoPro Bluetooth Thermometer & Hygrometer. This seemed an ideal prize for students who might want check if their flat-share thermostat is being undemocratically switched on while they are out at lectures. Of course, a wooden spoon was given to the last place that played at least 8 of the 10 weeks (and if you’re having that much fun with the weather – can you really ever lose?).
With all of that said, we now put our winners’ names in lights (or on the blog) – immortalising them in the records of Weather Game glory.
Wooden Spoon: Catherine Toolan
Oil and Gas – 66.8 points – 32nd place
Best Pseudonym: Meg Stretton
The SIF Lord
External: Thomas Hall
Noctilucent – 518.6 points – 2nd place
Postgraduate: Caleb Miller
I own a sphere – 414.4 points – 8th place
Staff: Patrick McGuire
WindyCrashLandingOnYou – 432.4 points – 7th place
Overall Winner: Nathan Ng
Come Rain or (Keith) Shine – 534.3 points – 1st place
The Weather Game will be back in Spring of 2024. We are excited to run it, and hope to see many new and familiar faces (well, pseudonyms) there.
Mr Weathers
Ieuan Higgs and Nathan Edward-Inatimi
The Social Metwork 