re: Tropical Storm Erika - fat lady has sung, passed out, & getting dry humped

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Daylight savings time is a scam. Suck it.

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glad to have taught you something today.

The NHC never "admitted they had no idea" what was going on with this storm. Morons who look at models 300 hours out saying "omg look how different!!!!!" is not the equivalent of the NHC. The storm stayed on the path and within the cone projected by the NHC the entire time, and the intensity never went beyond what the NHC projected it to.

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I think this is proof that our weather technology still has a ways to go.

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This is very true from both a modeling standpoint and an understanding of the mircophysics of clouds and precipitation, etc. You can basically pick any weather topic and start digging into the current research and you will discover there is lots that we still don't understand. For modeling, we will never be able to accurately capture the initial state of the atmosphere and then add in that we don't understand a lot of what is going on and the prospects for improvement seem slim. Models will get better but there is an upper bound for sure.

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NHC has been clear for days now that they really didn't have much of a handle on this storm.

Here's the issue in perception as I see it. For several days they have been indicating that the storm could collapse. However, they also put out a 5 day track. The track is what everyone looks at and what makes the news. All the "we're not sure" and "it might collapse" language is in the technical discussion that gets released with every advisory. But many people don't read that.

The tech discussions the last day or so also said that the high uncertainty was reason they never posted any watches for Florida.

I think the NHC was honest in admitting they had no idea about this one. I'm not sure that message got to the mass media, and got to the people.

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Yes, they had a 5 day track with a hurricane approaching Miami but then in the discussion talked about how the forecast was low confidence. The public doesn't read the discussion and the media just reports the graphics. There is a good bit of talk about how to visualize uncertainty and I'm certainly in favor of doing away with the straight line point-to-point plot. Some kind of density graphic would probably work better, esp. beyond D3. Something like this:



Eta: however, I'm not sure how you would educate the public on interpreting a density graphic that conveyed uncertainty of track and intensity

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The entire east coast and gulf coast was under high alert for a storm that was essentially a tropical depression or weaker for about half the time they actually called it a tropical storm

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Its always good to be cautious, BUT The Weather Channel goes WAY overboard with its coverage... Not that its a bad thing but I just bet at the WC headquarters they are wishing the storm had some more to it..... I prepare every year no matter if we have a storm or not.... People panic because they are lazy..

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but are trailers anchored down at all?

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Hell if I know....

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This next wave coming off of Africa should be interesting

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Just a name waster, if it gets named.

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Forget these?

Hurricane Dennis, CAT 3 when it hit the Florida panhandle.

Hurricane Ivan, was a CAT 5, then intensity lowered to a CAT 3 when it hit the Alabama coast.

Hurricane Isabel, the worst hurricane to hit the Chesapeake Bay area in 70 years, causing 17 deaths and $3 billion in damage.

There's more, but the point is... they all originated as a tropical wave coming out of Africa.

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Hasnt the last 10 years been relatively quiet? Especially after the doom and gloom talk of 2005 and how that would be the new normal.

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the last "major" hurricane to hit the US Wilma in (wait for it)...


2005

let's remember... Sandy was only cat. 1 hurricane strength when it hit NY/NJ and had actually be downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone at the time of landfall

the other part of Sandy was it merging w/ a cold front and becoming a winter storm after coming onshore

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Gustav and Issac. I don't think either were hurricanes when they made landfall, though.

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What?

But Katrina and global warming!!