When Weather Tools first developed the California Annual Precipitation (CAP) forecast, the goal was exceedingly ambitious: provide an accurate, long-lead water year forecast for California.

But as the track record grew, we began asking another question:‍

Was this approach unique to California—or was it something more broadly applicable?‍

Some of you may remember where that question led us.  We started testing the methodology in Australia then Israel, other regions with similar climates to California.

What we found was striking: across each geography, the forecasts continued to verify. The same underlying framework—applied across multiple climate regimes and continents— produced meaningful seasonal precipitation forecasts.

What started as a California forecasting tool began to point toward a much broader global phenomenon.

Introducing ALICE

ALICE (Atmospheric Linkages Informing Community Expectations) is the broader forecasting framework behind CAP.

Rather than relying on traditional climate analogs or broad probability outlooks, ALICE reads the atmosphere directly, using standard meteorological observations to identify the seasonal precipitation signal already embedded within the atmosphere’s current state.

When that signal is extracted, the result is a water-year precipitation forecast issued before the season unfolds.

And once issued, the forecast is not adjusted.

To date, ALICE has produced 25 forecast-verification pairs across California, Australia, and Israel, spanning eight climate regimes and three continents.

Within ALICE’s verified design envelope, 96% of forecasts correctly identified whether the season would be wetter or drier than normal.

This scalable framework for long-lead precipitation forecasting can now be evaluated and applied in regions around the world.

We’ve launched a new ALICE webpage that explains the science, track record, verification history, and potential applications of ALICE in much greater detail.

For more information about Weather Tools’ products and how we can serve you, check out our website or set up a call.