Every year in the SFE, a fundamental problem arises when evaluating the long-range full-period forecasts: how to rate the long-range full period forecasts. On the Innovation Desk, participants are given the chance to issue Day 3 forecasts in addition to their day 1 forecast, if time and the potential warrants. Due to the weekly structure of the SFE (which runs M-F), at best two of these forecasts can be evaluated each week - those issued on Monday for Wednesday, and those issued on Tuesday for Thursday. Luckily, with a relatively active period of severe weather CONUS-wide, the three weeks of the experiment so far have yielded evaluations for four out of the potential six days that have Day 3 forecasts. Two of these forecasts give examples of how the long-range forecasts can change as the day of the event draws nearer, and more guidance becomes available: 10 May 2017 and 18 May 2017.
