Hurricane Florence

Nope......the tail went to South Carolina four days ago and now is showing going North. This storm broke down to a cat 1 where the eye definition was hardly visible and spanned a large area with the same 70 mph winds. I always argued that within a week of landfall, they never get within fifty miles.......this was showing further south, and then shifted North which explains why they reversed the tail after landfall......darts.

The eye was visible and went over land.

It was breaking up into a series of bands which actually had higher wind speeds than the dissipating eye wall when it parked on land. Again, the initial forecast five days out had the storm heading south and curling further south over South Carolina........it was updated about two days before to show more of a ninety degree angle of crossing SC and NC, and then the current northerly path........The rain was a given, as their hurricane hunters can measure volume and retention, but the complexities of surge and strength are usually darts and hand grenades. If it was forecast as a Cat 1 with six foot surge......do you really think people would have evacuated?

2seaoat wrote:Where were the 20 foot storm surge which I heard about for four days.

Don't know where you get your information or who these "weather people" are you refer to, but the National Hurricane Center NEVER predicted a 20 foot storm surge.

Look: maybe we should just send YOU to the NHC; surely you can do a much better job than any of those ignoramuses.

Joanimaroni wrote:96  hours out in the prediction an actual landfall was within 2 miles . Great job.

2seaoat wrote:Nope......the tail went to South Carolina four days ago and now is showing going North.  This storm broke down to a cat 1 where the eye definition was hardly visible and spanned a large area with the same 70 mph winds.  I always argued that within a week of landfall, they never get within fifty miles.......this was showing further south, and then shifted North which explains why they reversed the tail after landfall......darts.

You don't have the faintest clue what you're talking about.

The qualitative difference between the European model and the others show that this is darts. The predictive powers five days out is darts. The science has not caught up to the illusion. Of course I do not know what I am talking about.....If I did......I too could guess where a hurricane is going, how strong it will be, and what the surges will be. I am referring to CNN weather graphics which showed projected storm surges along the coast........let me ask you this......if I do not know what I am talking about would both of you have left the area if five days from a hurricane projected to hit PB with a CAT 1 and six foot storm surge? Bad information kills people. I certainly would leave if people were telling me twenty foot surges and 140 mph winds. darts.

Cat 4-5 I would go to Pensacola. Strong Cat 3 maybe.

Unlike Joani, I live on the barrier island, only two short blocks from the Gulf, and have to be concerned with whether or not vehicle(s) parked underneath the house would be likely to float in a surge.  For a Cat. 1 with little likelihood of intensification and a predicted surge of 5 or 6 ft.(as per the NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER's official published Discussions, the ONLY valid authority, NOT CNN or anyone else), a decision to evacuate would be borderline, and would partially if not largely depend on whether or not local authorities were planning on shutting off water.    

But of course you miss the entire point, Sea.  If the best available modeling several days out calls for a major hurricane affecting a population so large that evacuations cannot be safely effected by waiting until just a couple of days ahead of the storm (i.e. once more definitive modeling is available), then the wisest thing to do is call for evacuations at that time, and for people to leave, EVEN IF it turns out to be a full or partial false alarm.  

Anything else would be considered almost criminally irresponsible, especially if, AS CAN ALWAYS HAPPEN since intensity forecasting has very admittedly NOT yet reached the accuracy of path tracking, the storm turned out to be just as powerful, if not more so, than originally predicted.

Then the loss of life would be blamed on the NHC, and you would be the first one outraged over it, and you know you would, so please use your common sense, read only the NHC's updates -- the best and highest source of hurricane info currently available in the nation if not the world --  and stop these useless rants.

People died in Katrina because they had been told the year before that Ivan was going to destroy Biloxi. Everybody left town including many friends in Biloxi only to find out that they got NOTHING. So Katrina is approaching and I call friends in Biloxi and to the last one that Saturday night, they had not left because they did NOT believe the dart board guesses. As a result I had over twenty people staying at my new home in Navarre because they thought wolf had been called too many times. I would say the computer models of today are like a commodore computer thirty years ago.......an improvement but NOT that accurate a week out.

This had been my argument with Bob. What good is accuracy at the two day mark. It is too late by then........and if a Cat 1 was forecast with 80mph winds, we would probably stay. However, if a week out they are telling me a Cat 4 and surges up to 20 feet.....it would be time to visit some family in Birmingham.

I repeat - a 20 foot storm surge was never predicted by the NHC, talk about spreading false information.

As for humans' being susceptible to the crying wolf syndrome, that's not the fault of the authorities, but of the people who decide not to leave. It's THEIR decision to take the risk. This is about personal responsibility and accepting the FACT that hurricane predictions are far from infallible. That's the current state of the science, and we have to live with that reality.

https://weather.com/safety/hurricane/news/2018-09-10-storm-surge-category-4-hurricane-carolinas

Were you away from cable news?.....please note the NOAA emblem on the storm surges

OK I stand corrected, based on this graphic. But the storm surge maps on NHC's Florence page didn't show such a surge height -- at least not at any time I was perusing it -- and I'm guessing that's because by the time the storm was clearly headed for NC they expected it to weaken right before landfall. This graphic may be from earlier on in the storm's development/progression -- but in any case, obviously I missed it.

I'm a regular watcher of The Weather Channel, though usually take their info with a large grain of salt since they're in the "stay tuned" business, but even they were not hyping a 20 ft. number that I recall. For most of the period they were talking 6 - 12 ft.

In any event, see how easy it is to admit one was mistaken, Sea? You should try it some time.

In any event, see how easy it is to admit one was mistaken, Sea? You should try it some time.

We both know that I seldom make mistakes, and I certainly do not have to make things up about how horrible the predictive powers of hurricane forecasting has become. A week out it is dart board time. The models themselves confirm the more than fifty mile errors routinely, but in this hurricane five days out was predicted further south with a tail which went in a South South west direction....it changed a couple days out from landfall to a more direct westerly path, and then when it finally dissipated it showed the system moving more in a Northerly direction. Charleston a week out was certainly being discussed as a possible target, and in the same breath it could impact as far north as Delaware, and even mention of Washington DC.

I happen to know the world's most recognized weather expert in Tom skilling who has been doing the weather since high school but gained his fame from the skits on SNL as tommy skillethead. I would go to a weather consortium at Fermi lab as Tom would hold the same once a year dissecting tornado and hurricane weather systems and how primitive our tools still are for accurate long term weather forecasting. It is a fricking illusion that a week out those forecasting tools are much more accurate than throwing darts. The European model shows qualitative differences among these primitive tools by many sources of hurricane forecasting. I am sorry people die from the repeated failures in forecasting one week before landfall. If the most brilliant weather people are telling us how primitive these tools are, why do pretend scientist go on tv and post nonsense like the storm surge information of this storm. The flooding is a no brainer where scientist have almost perfected the amount of moisture in a storm and the rainfalls expected. Rarely, are they wrong, but a week out as to intensity, storm surge, and within fifty miles of projected path.......nope.

2seaoat wrote:In any event, see how easy it is to admit one was mistaken, Sea? You should try it some time.

We both know that I seldom make mistakes

HA! What we both know, along with everyone else who's been on this forum for a while, is that's blustery, arrogant and egotistical B.S. from someone who finds it virtually impossible to admit when he's wrong or misinformed or mistaken or anything else short of perfect -- even though it happens far more frequently than he would ever in a million years admit.

Admit it.

Admit it.

nailed most of it, but mistakes.........rare. I do readily admit a mistake.....but they are so rare, there are cobwebs on that part of my brain. The simple truth is that I irritate people being right so often, and I must admit there is a bit of shameful joy in the same. You know the kid raising his hand all the time with the right answer.......teacher's pet.

2seaoat wrote:Admit it.

nailed most of it, but mistakes.........rare.  I do readily admit a mistake.....but they are so rare, there are cobwebs on that part of my brain.  The simple truth is that I irritate people being right so often, and I must admit there is a bit of shameful joy in the same.  You know the kid raising his hand all the time with the right answer.......teacher's pet.