No. What a stupid article.
I don’t know but the weather channel is pretty pathetic about predicting local weather. I was 10 minutes into a strong storm this morning before the warning for my area was given.
No, wreckless reporting from the eye of the hurricane endangers lives.
Maybe they need to get out of the prediction service business and just report the weather.
Why do we want a private business to get blame and liability for this.
Besides, didn’t the farmers almanac already do this?
In my opinion, severe weather alerts should only be issued if there is a real danger. The frequency of these alerts caused them to be ignore.
The hype comes from privately owned weather services (e.g. TWC) hawking for advertising. The more they stir doom, the more people will tune in.
Yes,and
no.
Despite dire predictions from the National Hurricane Center, no hurricanes hit the U.S. last year. This year they are again predicting as many as 10 hurricanes, up to five of them hitting the U.S.
First of all, I don't see ANY seasonal hurricane forecast predicting the number of hits - instead, they usually predict a statistical chance of a given part of the coast getting hit.
Second, you can have a very active hurricane season and have no hits on the US, and vice versa - Andrew happened during an otherwise slow year.
Third, forecasts are just that - forecasts. Last year, there was an unexpected early el Nino.
And all I see from Accuweather is hype.
The private weather services (Accu-Weather and TWC) get all their data from NOAA/NWS. They simply do not have the resources to gather the data (satellites, Cray computers etc); they just put their own predictions together. TWC is mainly entertainment now. IMHO, the data gathering and forecast probality should be left to NOAA/NWS. Ever notice that they never say it WILL rain, rather that it MIGHT rain ....
Another note - Ole ex-Senator Ric Santorum wanted to privatize (Accu Weather is in State College PA). Groups like BOAT US were vehemently opposed to this and contributed to his opponent. Lots of boaters could give a rat’s a!! about abortion but wanted to keep the free non-commercial weather radio.
Those of us that grew up on the coast understand hurricane prep starts June 1st.
I followed the entire history of Dean from a disturbance off the coast of Africa to it’s current status. The predictions, both government and private, had Dean going just about everywhere except where it eventually went, from out to sea in the Atlantic, up the East Coast, into the Carolinas, Miami, the Keys, Hispanola, and the Gulf Coast. Predicting the course of a hurricane is not easy, and if this writer thinks he can do better, then let’s see him make his own predictions and see how accurate he is. If he prefers only to bitch about other people’s predictions, he can just STFU.
John Lott should stick to things he knows about.
How stupid. Next time there's a major hurricane or tornado outbreak or something, they can all just keep quite and see what happens; whether there's a greater loss of life with no warning than with one.
Idiots.
Turn it over to NASA with Algore in charge !!!
Problem solved.....sheeesh that was easy to fix.
Unfortunately, these aren’t the only problems with the National Weather Service. The service has been accused in the past of withholding government aircraft reconnaissance of hurricanes for up to 11 hours before releasing the information to private companies or the public.
Since when is the government required to release such info to a private company?
I'm reminded of the following paragraph that discussed the difficulties with forecasting the weather:
Imagine a rotating sphere that is 12,800 kilometers (8000 miles) in diameter, has a bumpy surface, is surrounded by a 40-kilometer-deep mixture of different gases whose concentrations vary both spatially and over time, and is heated, along with its surrounding gases, by a nuclear reactor 150 million kilometers (93 million miles) away. Imagine also that this sphere is revolving around the nuclear reactor and that some locations are heated more during one part of the revolution and other locations are heated during another part of the revolution. And imagine that this mixture of gases continually receives inputs from the surface below, generally calmly but sometimes through violent and highly localized injections. Then, imagine that after watching the gaseous mixture, you are expected to predict its state at one location on the sphere one, two, or more days into the future. This is essentially the task encountered day by day by a weather forecaster.
I’m rather neutral as to the NWS, but I think they have done a remarkable job in forecasting hurricane landfalls the last several years.
The forecast track for Dean has been lower Texas at its most northerly track since Dean was waaay out in the Antilles.
Folks don’t remember years past when landfall predictions were 24-36 hrs tops.