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Monday, October 16th, 2017

Why the U.S. is so bad at predicting hurricanes

Author:     SARAH OKESON
Source:     Salon
Publication Date:     10.15.2017•7:00 AM
 Link: Why the U.S. is so bad at predicting hurricanes
Stephan:   U.S. States and territories lie in ruins, and the general view amongst climatologists is that the U.S. is headed toward being second tier when it comes to hurricane prediction.

As the report spells out Trump  "proposed cutting NOAA by 16%, including slashing $82 million from the National Weather Service. The cuts would end developing extended forecasts and cut research in hurricanes, tornadoes and mapping oceans.

“The budget would ensure that NOAA and the National Weather Service become second- or third-tier weather forecasting enterprises frozen in the early 2000s,” said David Titley, a meteorology professor at Pennsylvania State University and the former chief operating officer at NOAA under Obama."

But under Trump and the Republican congress we have endless money for war.

CYGNSS Satellite Mission Aims to Improve Hurricane Forecasting
Credit: NASA

Our nation’s weather forecasting was so bad in 2005 that the National Hurricane Center didn’t predict Katrina’s direct hit on New Orleans until three days out.

More than a decade and millions of taxpayer dollars later, weather predictions have improved. Somewhat.

We could be facing the most active period of major storms on record, with the most Atlantic hurricanes to occur in a row since 1893, but our nation’s forecasters are consistently behind European, British and sometimes Canadian forecasters — which is probably why they missed Hurricane Irma by 194 nautical miles, as I’ve written about before for DCReport. Even the U.S. Air Force uses British weather-modeling software.

“We need to do better,” said Cliff Mass, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington.

During Hurricane Irma, American forecasters missed the path the […]

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1 Comment

  1. nexus5th on Monday, October 16, 2017 at 6:51 pm

    I don’t believe it will ever be possible to accurately predict the path of a hurricane. There are simply too many variables at play and they are constantly changing.