UGA graduate Jordan McLeod recently took home top prize in the 2014-2015 WxChallenge, a yearly national collegiate weather forecasting competition.
McLeod, who was earning his master’s degree at UGA when the forecasting competition began in fall 2014, beat out nearly 2,000 participants ranging from undergraduates to tenured professors from over 100 colleges and universities.
To compete, participants forecasted the weather conditions-daily maximum and minimum temperature, daily maximum sustained wind speed, daily precipitation total-for 10 selected cities across the U.S. Participants forecasted each city for two weeks and then submitted each city’s forecast to the WxChallenge website.
The competitors with the top 64 cumulative scores at the end of the fall and spring semesters were then placed in a four-week forecasting tournament structured similarly to the NCAA basketball finals. McLeod began this year’s tournament as a No. 7 seed and won every round to win the entire tournament.
UGA had a total of 13 team members who participated. This included six graduate students, five undergraduates and two alumni.
