What's the Deal with the "Weather Research Center"

[Derecho]

http://www.wxresearch.com/outlook/

They were quoted in a recent Reuters story.

They claim to be actual Meteorologists and AMS members.

However, reading the above page, their forecasts, and "verification" it strikes me entirely as nonsensical pseudosicence.

They purport to be using Sunspots to forecast the Atlantic Tropical season.

They consider their "primary" forecast to be simply giving a % chance of various sections of the coast being hit by a tropical system; their % they give for each section is usually close to climatology anyway.

They never give a section of the coast a 0% chance. Whenever a tropical system hits the US, they proudly crow about it as "verifying" their seasonal forecast.

They consider simply forecasting numbers of named storms and hurricanes "secondary"..but they've been horrendously and hilariously wrong the last three years, drastically undeforecasting each season, and they make nary a mention of it in any of their press releases.

Why is the media giving them any attention and does anyone see anything remotely scientifically valid about what they're doing? I sure don't.

[jasons2k]

I don't know much about them but they are frequently quoted in the Houston Chronicle.

They're not the only ones who have underforecasted the last 3 years, especially this past year.

From what I have read, sunspots are just one of the many factors they use.

EDIT: They are also quoted in the Chronicle article I posted earlier today.

[Derecho]

I don't know much about them but they are frequently quoted in the Houston Chronicle.

They're not the only ones who have underforecasted the last 3 years, especially this past year.

From what I have read, sunspots are just one of the many factors they use.

EDIT: They are also quoted in the Chronicle article I posted earlier today.

Oh, plenty of other people have underforecasted, but for Spring Forecasts they've underforecasted much more than everyone else.

And their claims of "verification" for their landfall forecasts strike me as completely absurd.

Gray will directly address his forecast errors; they simply breeze by the failure of their storm numbers forecasts like nothing happened.

However, the average newspaper reporter knows less than nothing about science or statistics and is unlikely to be capable of even noticing.