Word: storms
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...hurricane season starts Sunday, and if you're looking for a long-term storm forecast you can ask the Colorado State University Department of Atmospheric Science. Or you can ask someone like Bing, an elderly gentleman who used to cut lawns in my neck of Miami. Each year Bing would tell us what kind of hurricane season to expect. The key to his method was May: if it was a hot dry one, we'd better break out the window shutters; if it was cool and rainy, he'd tell us to relax. And he was usually right, especially...
...what about the scientists at Colorado State, considered one of the nation's premier hurricane forecast labs? In 2006 and 2007 they warned of unusually bad storm seasons, but both years turned out to be unusually calm. This year they see another depressing spate of depressions on the Atlantic horizon. Their latest forecast calls for 15 tropical storms, eight hurricanes and four strong hurricanes; a normal year sees about two-thirds of that activity. They might, of course, be proved right, but given their recent track record they also run the risk of crying wolf, which is part...
...really dramatic increase in Atlantic hurricane activity resulting from greenhouse warming." Quite a few of Knutson's colleagues in turn are questioning him and the computer models he's using to make this about-face. But for those of us who aren't in the eye of that scientific storm, it only raises the issue of whether predicting hurricanes is really any more reliable than forecasting earthquakes...
...contributed to the skyrocketing windstorm premiums that have forced many Florida residents to leave the state. For the past two years the South Florida Water Management District, reacting to the diluvial warnings, has drained water from Lake Okeechobee, one of the peninsula's most vital hydrosources, to avoid storm flooding. Because the deluges never came, this has helped exacerbate Florida's recent drought...
...None of this is to be confused with hurricane tracking, whose famous "cone of probability" has indeed become a dependable asset to those of us in a storm's path. The accuracy with which the National Hurricane Center here in Miami now forecasts a storm's strength as well as the time and place of its arrival, not just hours but days in advance, is a tribute to turn-of-the-century advances in meteorological spy hardware. But until seasonal forecasts like Colorado State's become more consistent, the best we can do during Hurricane Preparedness Week is just accept...