Hurricane Forecasts: Political and Pointless

They have been wrong for years.

Hey folks,

Happy Monday to you. In case you are following it. Clinton won Puerto Rico yesterday. Yesterday June 1, 2008 was also the official start of the Hurricane season. Here is South Florida, and all over the coastal areas, there has been a push on information and encouragement to get ready.

I heard on a local radio show this past Thursday or Friday, that something like 74 percent of Floridians are not at all concerned, nor are they really ready. Well, two seasons that have been predicted to be more active than normal and possibly more deadly than normal, due to GWBS, turned out to produce, NOTHING.

The bottom line is humans are fickle. We forget fast. We chose to forget devastation and horror, then chose not to think it can happen again. Or happen to us. So couple that with the fact that the "Experts" have continuously been wrong, you get what we have got. Complacent.

But that does not stop those in the Main Stream Media from hyping it up. Some do so with every good intention in mind, others to further agendas, but the bottom line is, no one really knows what is going to happen. According to AP IMPACT: Hurricane season outlooks of little use By ALLEN G. BREED, AP National Writer Sun Jun 1, 7:31 AM ET

Each April, weather wizard William Gray emerges from his burrow near the Rocky Mountains to offer his forecast for the six-month hurricane season that starts June 1. And the news media are there, breathlessly awaiting his every word.

It's a lot like Groundhog Day — and the results are worth just about as much.

"The hairs on the back of my neck don't stand up," ho-hums Craig Fugate, director of emergency management for Florida, the state that got raked by four hurricanes — three of them "major" — in 2004. When it comes to preparing, he says, these long-range forecasts "are not useful at all."

Think about this folks. Your local weather person cannot tell you without doubt that it will rain tomorrow. They can look up in the shy, see clouds, and say, "It may rain." Well, so can you.

This article goes on to point out that:

From the beginning, Gray issued disclaimers with his forecasts, like the one from May 1989 that asserted the forecast "can only predict about 50 percent of the total variability in Atlantic seasonal hurricane activity."

So why all the panic? Why do we listen to them?

Fugate thinks part of the problem is that the media and some public officials picked up the cloudy crystal ball and ran with it.

"Particularly national media has been using these forecasts inappropriately," he says. "I'm as guilty as anyone else."

Hurricane-prediction researchers are like chefs tinkering with a recipe for the same dish, and working from the same list of ingredients: In this case, decades worth of data from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction.

Studying past seasons, scientists look for patterns that might explain why one year was more active than another. Teams have developed computer models that emphasize different conditions — everything from ocean salinity and rainfall amounts over West Africa to sunspot cycles and the influences of the Pacific warm-water current known as El Nino.

They test their theories by "hindcasting" — basically, plugging in known conditions from past storm seasons and seeing how well the models recreate the historical results.

Just like the Global Warming BS. They claim computer models tell them what is going to happen. But as I keep telling you, computers can only say what they are told to say. Garbage or incorrect data in, garbage or incorrect data out.

Remember 2005?

That spring, Gray and Klotzbach forecast 15 named storms, eight of them hurricanes. Instead, there were a record 28 named storms in 2005, including 15 hurricanes — most notably Katrina.

The following year, the team overestimated the storm activity. Instead of the predicted 17 storms and nine hurricanes, the final numbers that season were 10 and five.

Coincidentally, 2005 was also the year Xie and his students published a groundbreaking paper in the journal "Geophysical Research Letters." In it, they suggested that the interplay of sea surface temperatures in the tropical North and South Atlantic, and not El Nino, was responsible for Florida's disastrous 2004 season.

The following year, NC State felt confident enough to issue its forecast publicly. In a release, the university's PR department would later crow that its "was the only national model to accurately forecast Atlantic hurricane activity" in 2006.

Unfortunately, NC State's 2007 forecast was as off as anyone's.

Yeah, WAY off. Remember they had to keep down grading their predictions. {Smile}

This season, Xie and master's student Elinor Keith are forecasting 13 to 15 named storms, but again with caveats — the highest probability they offer for any particular number in that range is 11 percent. They predict six to eight of those storms will become hurricanes — but put the probability of seven occurring at just over 14 percent.

I like Melissa Perlman's method.

"Let's say someone says this is going to be a really horrible hurricane season. Does that mean you close your business, lay off your employees?" says Melissa Perlman, who co-owns a small eco-resort in the beach town of Tulum on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. "I don't really start paying attention until they are actually on the map."

"It's like Nostradamus," adds Sonya Strasburg, who works at the Galveston Fishing Pier on the Texas barrier island — site of the nation's deadliest hurricane. "I don't believe it."

Folks, do not misunderstand what I'm saying. It really does only take one to destroy people's lives. One can kill many and cause massive damage. But I suggest, instead of listening to the "Experts" who are wrong most of the time. Getting yourselves all stressed out. Just handle it like our friends in the North East during the Winter. You know it's possible. You know what season it is. Get ready for the worse case scenario. Be prepared not panicked. Be alert. Be watchful. See one on the map heading your direction, then take the steps you need to.

We are in this together my friends. May they all blow out to sea this year, and may we all have peace and clam. But be ready just in case. See you tomorrow.
Peter

Sources:
AP IMPACT: Hurricane season outlooks of little use