Posted on 06/02/2008 5:42:29 AM PDT by Graybeard58
RALEIGH, N.C. -- Each April, weather wizard William Gray emerges from his burrow deep in 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.''
The AP contacted the emergency management agency in every coastal state from Texas to Maine and asked whether these seasonal forecasts play any role in their preparations for June 1. Their response was unanimous: They're a great way to get people thinking about the upcoming season, but that's about it.
Even an executive of the insurance company that helps fund Gray's work acknowledges the forecasts are of no real-world value to its operations. No guarantees
Regardless, since the former Colorado State University climatologist pioneered the seasonal predictions in 1984, other forecasters have followed suit.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Tropical Storm Risk Consortium in London and, most recently, the Coastal Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at North Carolina State University in Raleigh are now among teams attempting to handicap the storm season weeks or months ahead.
After high-profile, back-to-back busts by Gray and others, critics have questioned whether these long-range outlooks do more harm than good. But the very question presupposes that Gray, et al., have been promising more than they can deliver.
They can pretty accurately predict an above- or below-average season, even predict the likelihood a major storm will hit SOMEWHERE along the U.S. coast. Beyond that, they're not promising anything.
''Honestly, I think people get a lot more excited about it than I do in terms of what its usefulness is,'' says CSU scientist Phil Klotzbach, who has largely taken over the hurricane work of Gray, now semiretired.
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.''
North Carolina State's Lian Xie says in a boldface disclaimer in his 2008 forecast: ''Results presented herein are for scientific information exchange only. ... Users are at their own risk for using the forecasts in any decision making.'' No guarantees
So how did these things become such a big deal?
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.''
When Gray burst onto the scene a quarter century ago, some wondered what business a man nearly 2,000 miles from the Atlantic had predicting hurricanes. Still, writing about his predictions became a rite of spring.
Reporters would note when Gray missed, as in 1989, when he predicted a relatively mild season with only four hurricanes. Instead, a total of seven hurricanes and four tropical storms killed 84 people in the United States.
But most years, they have published his forecasts with little or no commentary on his overall record -- or even analysis of how he'd fared the season before.
That is, until 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.
When NOAA released its 2008 outlook last week, it included for the first time a pie chart showing the likelihood that its prediction of 12 to 16 named storms was accurate. The verdict: About 65 percent for the whole range.
Duh!!
Is it now less hurricanes or more hurricanes prove man made climate change?
Want accuracy? Buy the Farmer’s Almanac like I do. They are right about 50% of the time (either it rains or it doesn’t) and you get some humor too, these reports are rather devoid of humor.The only thing these reports do is increase our homeowner’s insurance because there “might” be a hurricane (3 increases in the last 3 years in S.C. ... and NO hurricanes) But ... there MIGHT be, so lets pay more. Thanks for the forecast and the rate increase!
Their predictions were borderline useless before they started playing global warming politics. Since then they have crossed the line into being overtly harmful.
Then there's my daughter who planned their honeymoon during Hurricane season in the carrabean...The big storm occured a week before the wedding...They did get their money back and wound up in the Carolinas for the honeymoon.
I think the best thing that comes out of the hurricane prediction is that it simply reminds and gets people to think about the upcoming season and what supplies and preperations they need to take care of.
Chaos...uh, theory.
.
Now why would the Tribune do that now after all those years of blindly reporting Gray's hurricane predictions?
Oh ya, its because William Gray is one of those “controversial” figures who does not subscribe to man-made global warming.
If that's the case, then naturally we must highlight the fact that his past predictions suck!
I'm a P&C underwriter(read: corporate insurance bastard). These reports carry no weight, or influence whatsoever in pricing or underwriting.
When they can use the same criteria they use to make the prediction to accurately “predict” the number of storms in a year “already passed”, they will prove they are more than just fortune tellers.
The historical record is there, get the model to accurately track weather changes using that information.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.