Each morning we wake up, open the front door, grab the newspaper, look at the forecast for the day's high temperature, and dress based on that forecast. (Occasionally we also shower.) And every day, around noon, we find ourselves complaining that we're too hot because the paper was completely wrong. So we asked Intern Mary to track the weekday results of the city's three major papers and the New York Sun against the actual high temperatures over a two-week period. She also looked at the online predictions, for those of you who get your news that way. Her findings may surprise you!


Online
 The Daily News was the worst offender here, deviating an average 6.78 degrees from the day's high. The Post and the Times, both of which use AccuWeather for their online predictions, were the closest, with only a two degree deviation. Overall, the online temperature matched the actual high a pathetic 10.25 percent of the time, giving a ninety percent chance that forecasts are off by at least one degree. Special mention goes to the Sun, which was 23 degrees off on Aug 21st and 21 degrees off on Aug 22nd.

Average Variation By Paper
 1) Daily News: 6.78 degrees
2) Sun: 6.53 degrees
3) Times and Post 2 degrees


Print
 The Post takes the title here, being off an average of almost four degrees from the day's high. The Times is the most accurate, with an average 1.54 degree difference between forecast and reality. Overall, the print temperature matched the actual high only 17.3 percent of the time. So print temperatures are more accurate than online temperatures, but are still wrong more than 80 percent of the time.

Average Variation By Paper
 1) Post: 3.77 degrees
2) Daily News: 2.62 degrees
3) Sun: 2.61 degrees
4) Times: 1.54 degrees

What's the lesson here? Watch T.V. NY1's "Weather On The Ones" is usually right, right? But if you can't stand to do that, maybe you actually have to buy a newspaper!