We're good here on FR, but we haven't got the entire internet captured to this site (yet), so of course a lot of folks were uninformed.
No, the National Hurricane Center did not do their jobs this week. I have three reasons why:
1. Extremely slow to embrace the better storm models. Their model of usual choice is the GFS weather model. There are known problems with it that came heavily into play here, and thus its output should have been discounted heavily last week.
2. Continued to report this storm as a Category 1 hurricane. Failed to highlight the significance of the storm size. Failed to highlight the storm surge issues with storm size + angle of approach. Failed to mention the significance of the extremely low pressure readings.
3. Whiffed completely on the acceleration of Sandy to the coast... which reduced "little time to prepare" to "no time to prepare". Especially considering that people tend to ignore news on a weekend.
Loss of life cannot be avoided here, but I would put a lot of these deaths on the NHC for doing a terrible job on Sandy. They MUST recognize the model problems and they MUST develop a different hurricane scaling system for reporting the danger that each storm poses.
Example: Andrew was a high 4/low Cat 5 storm - yet it impacted a VERY narrow area in south Florida... you could almost call it a huge tornado by comparison to Sandy. I was 200 miles up the coast and hardly had more than a stiff breeze out of it. On that scale, Sandy was a moderate Cat 1, but obviously was a lot worse overall.
I submit that a better measure of storm potential (and Joe Bastardi uses such a scale for his own forecasts, btw) would better alert the public... which is ultimately the NHC's job. [/rant]
I am really starting to get angry at alot of these FReepers - everywhere from simply dismissive to flippant and derisive, and cruel.
I saw some really obnoxious posts pre-storm from a few particular people who keep heaping it on. But now I’m also seeing add-ons from people simply dismissing anything that’s happened.
I’m tired of people crying about how “we’re ignored” (total BS - we heard about Katrina for a week before it hit; and we know about the super events in the midwest), and even more childishly bratty:
“our storm is better than your storm!”
OOOOOooooo, is this making me mad!
I’m finding it hard to now be rational and put down my genuine observations as someone who actually was concerned for once about a TS/hur heading this way.