Charley Shows Progress, Pitfalls in Forecasting.

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I SAY SEVERE FORECASTING FAILURES. WHAT DO Y' ALL THINK?


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By Michael Christie

MIAMI (Reuters) - A few decades ago, the earliest warning Floridians would have had of a hurricane would have been black clouds on the horizon. Now people are complaining after Hurricane Charley hit shore at a point just 60 miles off from the track projected by meteorologists.

Hurricane predictions have come a long way since the first earth-mapping satellite was launched and, more significantly, since elaborate computer modeling became possible.


Despite the surprise expressed by some when Charley roared ashore on Friday farther down the southwest Florida coast than expected, and far stronger than expected, forecasters said the National Hurricane Center (news - web sites) could not have done a better job.


"They did a fabulous show actually," said Eric Williford, a meteorologist with private Raleigh, N.C.-based forecasters Weather Predict Inc. "Their track error was very low. They outperformed most of the numerical models."


The National Hurricane Center in Miami issued storm warnings for the entire western coast of Florida as Charley stormed across Cuba, grazed the Florida Keys and then appeared likely to make a northeastward swing toward land.


Its predictions for the storm's track indicated that the populous metropolitan area of Tampa-St. Petersburg was the hurricane's most likely target but warned that the slightest change in direction would make a big difference on a slanting coastline like southwestern Florida's.


In the end, Charley came ashore at Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda, 60 miles south of Tampa. It also grew suddenly into a deadly Category 4 storm -- the second-most powerful on the five-category Saffir-Simpson scale -- while the hurricane center had at most predicted Category 3 winds.


Some residents who remained in flimsy mobile homes and officials who initially feared many more had died than the 17 confirmed by Monday criticized what they saw as the vagueness of warnings about the threat to Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda.


CRITICISM IRRITATES


The criticism, which meteorologists say is unjustified, has irritated some staff at the hurricane center.


"I've been around for a long time so I'm not so much frustrated by this stuff because I'm used to it," said hurricane center meteorologist Miles Lawrence.


But Lawrence said the fact that forecasters did not predict Charley would become a Category 4 hurricane should not have made a difference for people in the warning area because guidelines called for them to evacuate anyway and for trailers to be evacuated in a Category 1 hurricane.


Vast improvements have been made in recent years in predicting a hurricane's likely path through computer modeling, although an error margin amounting to a 75-mile diversion over 24 hours is built in.


The real problems arise when it comes to forecasting a storm's intensity, which can be influenced by a host of factors, some of them still unknown.


Weather forecasters who work for the insurance industry to predict how much damage a storm may cause are also focused on another quality -- the size of a hurricane's destructive core.


For Charley this was an extremely small 6 miles, compared with a more usual 25 miles, said meteorologist Kyle Beatty of California-based Risk Management Solutions.


The result was a 10-mile-wide (16-km-wide) swath of destruction more commonly associated with tornadoes than with hurricanes. But it also meant damage to insured properties was a relatively mild $5 billion or so

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Excellent

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I SAY SEVERE FORECASTING FAILURES. WHAT DO Y' ALL THINK?

Nope. The track error for Charley was well below the NHC average track error.

There were severe media forecast potrayal errors, and severe comprehension errors by people that lived in the landfall area.

[cinlfla]

I am a Floridian an anyone in the warning area should have took action. IMO I think NHC did a good job of predicting Charley. Personaly I think people here have just become to comfortable thinking it can't happan to them.