How Much Snow Might There Be?

The goals of this project are to design an exploratory interface to increase users’ understanding of snowfall predictions in their area, explore effective interactive visualizations and web development techniques, and support our project work with that of other experts in the field. Given recent and upcoming snowstorms, we considered that an effective visualization for snowfall prediction could be useful. One of our members checks the weather daily and has noticed that communication of snowfall prediction for these storms can be hard to understand. The professor introduced us to a newer and more interpretable method of data visualization called a quantile dot plot, which is the focus of our project.

Quantile dot plots visualize a probability distribution of a given outcome in what my group believes to be a more comprehensible medium for viewers, as supported by the 2016 and 1987 study referenced in our Process Book. Find our Process Book here. Our visualizations–a quantile dot plot and the original bar chart–work well to accurately illustrate snowfall predictions, with easy viewing on both mobile devices and computers.