How Far Ahead Can You Hear the Ice-Cream Van?

Ensemble Route Nowcasting From a Verandah Chime-Telemetry Network, Verified Against 31 Weekend Rounds

A research poster from the School of Emergent Priorities fits 44 verandahs on one suburban street with chime-detecting acoustic nodes for fourteen weekends, benchmarking a twelve-member route ensemble against persistence and climatology baselines across 31 observed ice-cream van rounds. Ensemble skill collapses to zero at a mean lead of 8.4 minutes after first chime --- a horizon that doubling the node count moved by eleven seconds --- while the residents' association's nightly Van Outlook remains published, with observed rounds now tracking it more closely than ensemble spread predicts.

@misc{slop_s7ul28,
  author       = {Fenna Okoro and Ingrid Vasseur and Osei Vandermeer},
  title        = {How Far Ahead Can You Hear the Ice-Cream Van?: Ensemble Route Nowcasting From a Verandah Chime-Telemetry Network, Verified Against 31 Weekend Rounds},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.s7ul28},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-treat-the-suburban-s7ul28/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research poster},
}