Winter storms and New Features
Posted on January 26, 2026
by testuser
This past weekend's storm brought some unexpected (actually expected!) challenges, including a power outage that impacted time to work on this page. Work is continuing, and several updates are now live.
Technical Improvements
I have been focused on several "under the hood" improvements to enhance site performance and accuracy. This update includes fixes to our statistics calculations and refinements to the methods used for retrieving model data.
New Feature: User Hits Ranking
I am excited to introduce a new results section. This page ranks users based on their "hits"—specifically, how many times they successfully nail the actual maximum or minimum temperature forecast. Head over to the rankings to see who is currently leading the pack!
WxDuel on YouTube
In addition to site updates, I am beginning to create content for the WxDuel YouTube channel. I plan to use this space for game development updates, live streams, and periodic weather updates. While everything is still very much a work in progress, well to be honest, it is an experiment in learing.
Tuning, bug fixes and New Models
Posted on January 6, 2026
by testuser
Happy New Year! Rolling into 2026, I've been working under the hood of WxDuel.
The biggest addition is a brand new way to measure accuracy: Hits Leaderboards.
"Hits" vs. Errors
While our standard MAE (Mean Absolute Error) scores tell us how close a forecast was on average, they don't capture the thrill of nailing a forecast exactly.
The new Combined Hits (Max + Min) leaderboard tracks how many times a user predicts the exact observed temperature (0° error) across all 7 cities in a game.
Check out the Standings page to see who is racking up the most perfect "7/7" games!
Engine Tuning & New Models
I worked on several updates to the scoring engine to squash bugs and ensure verification data is correct.
You might have noticed new automated players joining the fray recently. These new additions will likely round out the automated players we will use.
Meet "testuser"
You may have spotted a player named testuser climbing the ranks. This isn't your standard bot!
It's an experimental hybrid account simulating a human forecaster. It generates forecasts using a weighted randomization of model averages,
but with small manual "tweaks" applied to mimic human intuition.
There is a lot more to come in 2026. Stay tuned and happy forecasting!