re: Hurricane Nate - Moving Inland - Hurricane Season Over?

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So why not ridicule all the wrong forecasts?

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to be fair, PJ has earned his reputation for being wrong about everything, not just hurricanes

That's because people don't understand uncertainty. Climate and weather is an ever evolving change where over night something can happen that completely changes the dynamics of where a storm can go. It's not something that's easily predictable. That's why they give you all this information and show you probability this storm can still have RI or it might be a weak Cat 1 by the time it hits land. The closer it gets the lower the probability goes down and more accurate it gets. They have certainly whiffed on some things like Maria's intensity forecast was WAY off in just 24 hours. They do what they can to inform people on the probabilities in play and how they can change the storm.

As far as Irma goes, I think the NHC did a fantastic job predicting where that storm was going to go. What you're talking about was well past 7 days out which we all know can't be predicted. On that storm I remember 7 days out they were consistent on the turn north being just off Florida's coast hitting SC/NC or off the west side of Florida. Turned out it hit the west side but the tracks were very consistent for 7 days in that area on the northward turn. Gave plenty of people time to prepare. The alternative is you can be like Central America and have 20 deaths from a tropical storm.

We've had this discussion before but every year they get more accurate. An example, just compare the cones from 10 years ago compared to how they are now.

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Remember when the NHC consensus was for Irma to go well east of Florida and out to sea not even making a U.S. mainland landfall? Then it changed to it making landfall near Miami and then had it going up the west coast of Florida and making landfall near Tampa/St Pete before nudging it back towards the east.

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Also, it's worth noting that this was never the NHC forecast. They stick to 5-day forecasts, and they were actually very good with Irma. However, some of the computer models past 5 days were showing the out to sea route early in the development.