The scoreboard
How Nimbo’s rain nowcast scores across Europe, against pySTEPS, the open-source standard: on radar, in rain gauges and at airports, on rainy days it never saw in training. Every number below is read from the published results file.
How Nimbo works
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1Sees through radar noise
Clutter and false echoes are cleaned out before anything moves.
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2Learned from 704 days of rain
It moves the rain and lets storms grow or fade, 10 minutes at a time.
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3Keeps downpours alive
Heavy rain stays heavy hours ahead instead of melting away, and rain gauges confirm it.
Day after day, the better forecast
Nimbo against pySTEPS, the open-source standard, on 39 rainy days across Europe that Nimbo never saw in training.
Day by day, one hour ahead
Each square is one day: blue when Nimbo’s forecast of the next hour came closer to the rain that fell, green when pySTEPS’ did.
About the methods and the data
Our model against pySTEPS, the open-source standard run as anyone would out of the box, on the same radar and the same 39 rainy days, none of them used in training. Vertical bars on the charts: the range a score could take on other rainy days.
Radar
Rain on the radar
Did the forecast put rain where the radar later saw it, on every 2 km square?
Explore the details
How it’s computed
Pf and Po are the share of rainy squares within 10 km (5 × 5 squares) in the forecast and on the radar.
The truth here is the radar network’s own rain product, close to what Nimbo learns from, so this check favours us; the gauges and airports below are independent of both forecasts.
Rain gauges
Rain in the gauges
The independent check: what rain gauges across Europe actually measured, hour by hour.
Explore the details
How it’s computed
Each hour’s forecast rain total at the gauge is compared with what the gauge measured: light, moderate and heavy mean at least 0.2, 1 and 5 mm in the hour. Same formulas as on the radar.
Airports
Rain at airports
Did it rain at the airport? Each airport’s own weather reports say.
Explore the details
How it’s computed
Each forecast is checked against every 10-minute interval that follows it, rain or dry as the airport reported it; a point on the curve pools every forecast at that distance ahead.