You can't forecast the hurricane season  (Jun 2002)

This week, the following news  article appeared:

"DENVER - Hurricane expert William Gray has revised downward his forecast

for 2002 Atlantic storms but is still calling for an above-average season.

In a report released in April, Gray and his Colorado State University

forecast team predicted 12 named storms and seven hurricanes, three of them

major. On Friday, he predicted 11 named storms and six hurricanes, two of

them major.

"We still anticipate this year's hurricane season to be reasonably active,"

Gray said. The average per year is 9.6 named storms, 5.9 hurricanes and 2.3

major hurricanes.

Gray also said the likelihood of a hurricane hitting the U.S. mainland is

63 percent, compared with the average of 52 percent.

The forecast revision is due to Atlantic surface temperatures being lower

than expected over the past few months. A weak El Nino in the Pacific also

will inhibit hurricane activity, said Gray.

He said it is only a matter of time until a major storm hits the U.S.

mainland. The last 19 Atlantic basin hurricanes have not crossed the U.S.

coast -- a record. And over the past 35 years, there has been a decrease in

the number of major hurricanes striking the U.S. coast.

Gray, who has become a sort of Cassandra, warning of the danger of

development along coastlines, said, "The storms are out there, but they

have just not come ashore. Climatological averages will eventually correct

themselves, and when that happens, we will see a significant increase in

the number of major hurricanes making landfall in the United States.

"With the exploding growth in coastal populations," Gray said, "people

living on the southeastern U.S. coastline, especially along the southern

half of the Florida Peninsula, must be prepared in the next few decades for

landfalling hurricanes and levels of destruction many, many times greater

than anything that has been witnessed in the past 35 years."

For the U.S. East Coast and Florida Peninsula, the probability of one or

more major hurricanes making landfall this year is 42 percent. The

probability is 35 percent for the U.S. Gulf of Mexico area.

Gray and his research team will issue one more forecast Aug. 7, before the

start of the most active portion of the hurricane season."

Comment:  I sent this note to the bz-culture newslist on 28 Jun 2002.

I found these notes interesting because they came from my (former) neck of the woods -- Colorado. I am very familiar with weather forecasting in Colorado; the weather there is about as deterministic as weather can be (which is to say...not very) But, you can more or less count on having the same weather in Colorado that you had two days ago in California, since weather systems travel about 500 miles a day, from west to east. Small weather effects, like squall fronts which result from the interaction of highs and lows, are likewise, fairly predictable because of the geography (land is more predictable than water).

Since I'm an avid weather buff, I began studying the weather well before I came to Belize. My attention was captured by Mitch (3 months before we arrived) and I've been treated to a half dozen close storms, and tracks by the dozens since then. Here's what I've discovered:

Hurricanes arise from extremely chaotic eddies created by the friction between the oceanic air masses (both Atlantic and pacific) and the equatorial jet stream. (That due to the fact that the actual velocity of air at the equator is higher than it is at northern and southern latitudes.) In the "tropical Atlantic", as the Hurricane Service calls it, these chaotic eddies and swirls result in weather systems which travel "backwards" to anything a North American forecaster would see, that is from Africa to the Caribbean. Of course, because hurricanes are potentially disastrous, we track them very closely. However, understand that these are tracked in real time, by radiosonde (dropped balloons) and fly-bys, or fly-thrus. There is no vast system of weather stations such as we have in North America. 

I call these eddies "chaotic". Well, all weather systems are chaotic, but these are much more so, and they are also more violent. We have hurricanes; they have "cyclones" in the US. (A cyclone is just a moving high or low.) The thing is, the chaos and the violence combine to create conditions which cannot be forecast at long range!!

Anyone who claims to "forecast the hurricane season" is a fraud.

Don't take my word for it. If you're not familiar with Chaos Theory, let me recommend Wikipedia. 

Here's a quote from "Chaos without the math.":

"Because of the "Butterfly Effect," it is now accepted that weather forecasts can be accurate only in the short-term, and that long-term forecasts, even made with the most sophisticated computer methods imaginable, will always be no better than guesses. "

Just to complicate the situation, the measurements of El Niņo, La Niņa, and their effects (or apparent effects) on climate have not been very good, and weather forecasting, just like any other science, depends upon precise measurements. 

My bottom line is, almost anybody can call himself an expert, and publish something, and a bunch of people will believe him. If he has a title, or a "Center for (fill in the blank)" more people will believe him.

I'm not an expert. I'm just telling you the way it is. 

Sr. ric

PS: Psst! Wanta buy a copy of the Farmer's Almanac?

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