Tag Archives: hurricane

Hurricane Lee forecast game

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Update: we have a winner!

It took longer than I’d have liked to publish the results of this contest. I was traveling out of the country. But I’d like to congratulate KP on winning the Lee forecast contest.

One thing that I realized after the fact: my changes below made it so only whole numbers could be used for latitude and longitude. I’ve fixed that for next time!

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The prodigal game returns! A technical glitch ruined the Dorian contest in 2019, so we haven’t seen a Funnel Fiasco tropical forecast game since Hurricane Matthew in 2016. But I’m pleased to announce that we’re up and running for Hurricane Lee. You can submit your landfall forecast by 2100 UTC on Wednesday 13 September.

In keeping with tradition, we’re still using the same crappy Perl script I wrote in 2005. Despite the fact that I’ve been putting off a total rewrite for over a decade, I did make a few improvements recently:

  • Numerical fields now require numeric input. If you were hoping to submit “butts” as your wind speed, I’m sorry to disappoint you.
  • Coordinates are constrained to reasonable ranges. I refuse to give in to Kevin’s whining about west being negative numbers. (I believe my exact words to him were “take it up with the Prime Meridian.”) But I was feeling magnanimous so I’ve constrained the latitude to 0–90 degrees north and the longitude to 180 degrees west to 10 degrees east.
  • Similarly, wind speed is now constrained to realistic values. You can’t submit a wind speed less than zero or above 200 miles per hour.
  • Furtherly similar, the time segments can’t be negative or overflow.

So go ahead and submit your forecast by 2100 UTC on Wednesday so you can join in the grand tradition.

AccuWeather’s new hurricane scale

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It’s no secret that the Saffir-Simpson scale, used to rate the strength of hurricanes, is inadequate. It is based solely on wind speed, which does a poor job of communicating the potential impacts. I wrote just a few months ago that it’s time to consider retiring it. So when I heard that AccuWeather rolled out a new hurricane scale, you might think I’d be in favor of it.

You would be wrong.

It’s not that I think AccuWeather’s leadership is awful. I do, but that’s not the point here. The AccuWeather RealImpact Scale for Hurricanes does not address the fundamental weakness of the Saffir-Simpson scale because it still produces a single number. That this number is produced from more inputs isn’t novel (the original Saffir-Simpson scale included other aspects of a hurricane threat) nor is it better at explaining the threat. You still need to tell the public why it received a particular rating, and the preparation for wind damage may be different from storm surge may be different from inland flooding.

Not to mention the fact that the scale is opaque. It cannot be reviewed by researchers and meteorologists outside of AccuWeather. There’s no indication that it’s had any input from social scientists and science communication experts to make sure it even accomplishes the stated goal of improving communication to the general public. In short, it’s just AccuWeather acting on its own and pretending there’s value.

After insulting National Weather Service employees by falsely implying that forecasts are degraded during this government shutdown, AccuWeather would do well to shut up for a little bit and work with the meteorological community.

Is it time to replace the Saffir-Simpson scale?

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Short answer: yes. Long answer: I’ll let Cliff Mass explain it. But as the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season draws to a close today, I’m more convinced than ever that the Saffir-Simpson scale does us no good.

The categories simply don’t mean much to the average person. Sustained wind speed is only one part of a hurricane’s power, and perhaps not even the most important. Storm surge, rainfall, and wind gusts are all significant contributors to the harm caused by hurricanes. Of course, coastal conditions, population density, and building quality factor into the end impact, too. Particularly inland, a slow-moving but weaker storm could cause more damage (due to flooding) than a stronger storm that spends less time over the area.

Ultimately, as I’ve written in the past, it’s not the meteorology that the public cares about. They want to know what the impact will be and what they should do about it. This means de-emphasizing wind speeds and focusing more on impacts. To its credit, NOAA agencies have put more emphasis on impacts in the last few years, but the weather industry as a whole needs to do a better job of embracing it. It requires a cultural change in the public, too, which may take a generation to settle in.

But there’s no time like the present to start preparing for day. And maybe it’s time to drop the distinction between tropical storm and hurricane watches and warnings, too.

Measuring hurricanes and tornadoes

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Today marks the beginning of the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, which runs through the end of November. As you may be aware, we measure hurricane intensity by measuring the wind speed. We categorize hurricanes into one of five levels on the Saffir-Simpson scale. In use since 1971, the scale is widely known, but does it serve the public well?

The United States has not seen a landfall from a “major” (category 3 or above) hurricane since Hurricane Wilma in 2005. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. The original Saffir-Simpson scale included effects from storm surge and flooding. However, the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale in use today excludes those; it is solely a measure of wind speed. So even though the U.S. has avoided major hurricanes, it has not avoided major damage. Consider that two of the three costliest hurricanes in U.S. history were not major hurricanes. Sandy wasn’t even technically a hurricane.

More recently, Hurricane Matthew caused a great deal of devastation in the Carolinas and Virginia. Matthew could have caused massive damage along the Florida Atlantic coast, but remained just far enough out to sea. And the damage further north was primarily due to inland flooding, not the near-shore wind and surge. By the time Matthew reached the Carolinas, it was “just” a Category 1 storm. As a result, many in the public did not recognize the serious threat it posed.

The National Hurricane Center in particular, and the weather industry in general, are working to improve hazard communication. The public, after all, doesn’t really care about the wind speed per se, but the effects of that wind (and rain). Last fall, several meterologists on discussed this on Twitter:

The discussion turned to the idea of real-time rating of tornadoes. NOAA researchers found that weather radar velocity data can be used to estimate the ultimate Enhanced Fujita Scale rating of a tornado. While not operational yet, it will be a big benefit to the public if it is further developed.

The ideal situation would combine the impact focus of the EF scale with the real-time rating used for hurricanes. Hurricanes are much easier to evaluate in real time for a variety of reasons, so they have a head start. Now if we can just start measuring hurricanes correctly.

Hurricanes doing laps

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As I write this Thursday night, Hurricane Matthew is approaching the east coast of Florida. By the time this post goes live, Matthew will have just made landfall (or made its closet approach to the Florida coast). Hundreds have been killed in Haiti, according to officials there, and I haven’t heard of any updates from Cuba or the Bahamas, both of which were hit fairly hard.

But even as the immediate concerns for Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas are the primary focus, there’s another though in the mind of meteorologists: a second round.

National Hurricane Center forecast graphic for Hurricane Matthew.

National Hurricane Center forecast graphic for Hurricane Matthew.

If the forecast holds and Matthew loops back around to strike the Bahamas and Florida again, it could exacerbate already devastating damage. It is expected to weaken, so the threat will be more for rain than wind, but with existing widespread damage, it could be significant.

Such an event is not unprecedented, but it is rare. Eduoard and Kyle, both in 2002, did loops over open water, but did not strike the same area twice. Hurricane Esther struck Cape Cod twice in 1961.

From what I’ve been able to find, it looks like 1994’s Hurricane Gordon is the closest analog, but it’s not great. Gordon snaked through the Florida Straights and moved onshore near Fort Myers. The second landfall was near the location of the “seafall” on the Atlantic coast. Gordon’s peak strength was a low-end category 1, not the category 3 or 4 that Matthew will be at landfall (or closest approach).

Matthew is already making its place in history as the strongest storm on record to impact the northeastern Florida coast. Next week, we’ll find out how much gets tacked on.

Hurricane Joaquin forecast contest begins

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Hey! The tropics have awoken and there’s a not-unreasonable chance that the newly-upgraded Hurricane Joaquin will make landfall. Here’s your chance to test your forecast skill: http://funnelfiasco.com/cgi-bin/hurricane.cgi?cmd=view&year=2015&name=joaquin

Submit your forecast by 00 UTC on October 2 (8 PM EDT Thursday). If Joaquin does not make landfall, we’ll just pretend like this never happened. For previous forecast game results, see http://weather.funnelfiasco.com/tropical/game/

TS Chantal forecast

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It’s that time again. The tropical storm Chantal forecast game has been opened. Be sure to get your forecast submitted by 8 PM EDT on Wednesday. As a new feature this year, I’ll include an approximated version of the National Hurricane Center’s forecast for comparison. You may also note that yet another year has passed without any significant updates to the game code. I swear one of these days I’ll make the improvements I keep promising.

Hurricane Sandy Forecast Game results

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We set a record for the number of players with the Hurricane Sandy contest, and the winner is the deceptively-named StormsHitGeorgia. Full results are at http://weather.funnelfiasco.com/tropical/game/2012-sandy.html. The scores were among the lowest I’ve ever seen, although the relatively short forecast period probably helped. It’s interesting to note that the last official forecast from the NHC, roughly converted into a forecast for this game, would have finished in 11th place.

“Frankenstorm”: or how a passing reference can become a popular sensation

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It’s not often that career civil service employees get to spark a national craze. Certainly that’s not what forecaster James Cisco of NOAA’s Hydrometeorological Prediction Center (HPC) had in mind when he was writing the HPC’s preliminary extended forecast discussion on Thursday morning. His discussion included the following:

…AND ONCE THE COMBINED GYRE MATERIALIZES, IT SHOULD SETTLE BACK TOWARD THE INTERIOR NORTHEAST THROUGH HALLOWEEN, INVITING PERHAPS A GHOULISH NICKNAME FOR THE CYCLONE ALONG THE LINES OF “FRANKENSTORM”, AN ALLUSION TO MARY SHELLEY’S GOTHIC CREATURE OF SYNTHESIZED ELEMENTS.

It was, in my view, a harmless way of pointing out the unusual hybrid nature of what is setting up to be a sequel to the “Perfect Storm“. But the media saw the discussion and immediately latched on to the name (seemingly forgetting that it already had a name: Hurricane Sandy). Before long, the name “Frankenstorm” was setting the social media world alight, too.

Not everyone was a fan of this label, though. The Weather Channel’s Eric Fisher complained about it, and apparently so did many others. In a media briefing earlier today, NOAA officials said that “Frankenstorm” would not be used in any further NWS products. Since only the one discussion ever used that term, NOAA is effectively saying “we’re going to stop doing what we already weren’t doing”, but I get the point. They don’t want to create confusion by having two names for the storm.

The Weather Channel, after recently announcing they’d be naming winter storms, has wisely decided to stick with “Sandy” for this storm, even though some of the impacts will be decidedly wintery. Still, the name, much like the monster, won’t die. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. There’s anecdotal evidence either way. On the one hand, the unusual name might cause people to pay more attention. On the other hand, calling by a non-hurricane name might give a false sense of diminished impact. Only a post-event analysis will tell.

Hurricane Sandy contest

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It’s time to take a risk on Hurricane Sandy. I’ve opened the Sandy forecast contest. Forecasts are due at 8 PM EDT on Friday (27 October at 00Z).

Some rule clarifications:

  • If the storm takes on extratropical characteristics, it still counts so long as the National Hurricane Center is tracking it at landfall.
  • Landfall is defined as the first hit of the mainland, regardless of country. Barrier islands, etc, do not count.