<b>When Will Arlene Strike?</b>

Every year the National Hurricane Center predicts higher than normal hurricanes. They have been totally wrong the last four seasons I have been here.

While it is always prudent to prepare for the worst, I don't put much consideration into these forecasts. Frankly, the technical ability to make such predictions has evolved little further than the tools used centuries ago - the crystal ball.

I've always wondered how NASA can pick a launch date and time months in advance but we can't predict the direction of a hurricane 24 hours in advance.

I checked a few weeks ago and I think it was last year that we tied for the most number of named storms in a season in recorded history.

I believe 2009, however, had close the fewest in a season.

Whilst in the UK the Hurricane warnings are not so urgent as for those in the SE USA my perception is that the forecasters have been well off by predicting far worse numbers of storms than have actually occurred over the last few years. It would be nice if they had a little table with

Year No of storms predicted and Actual number of storms so we can check their forecasting.

I suspect that they predict large numbers of destructive storms to get the google hits and maintain profile. It is phenomenally difficult to predict weather even a few hours ahead with so many unknowns and unmeasured variables in the grand phenomenon that is a weather system so making a 4 month prediction over the hurricane season seems fraught with error and variance.

It has little to do with actual forecasting or accuracy of predictions.

The people that are actually behind the forecasts are the lawyers, not the climatologists.

People expect the National Hurricane Center to be able to protect them by forecasting when danger looms.

If the NHC is wrong and no hurricanes appear people bitch and moan.

If the NHC is wrong and a CAT 4 or CAT 5 hurricane strikes, lawsuits appear faster than the winds that spawned them.

The simple solution for the NHC is to CYA and therefore err on the side of caution, which makes the prediction process pretty much useless.

The same goes for tornadoes. At one time the word Warning meant that a tornado was on the ground and immanent. That has been changed to a much less meaningful definition that conditions exist for a tornado to be spawned, but in no way means that one is on the ground.

Eventually, when institutions cry wolf long enough people ignore their predictions and the legal "I Agree" checkbox in the report.

Eventually, when institutions cry wolf long enough people ignore their predictions and the legal "I Agree" checkbox in the report.

GA

That boils it down perfectly and not only when it comes to forecasting weather and its extremes.

Too many panic buttons spoil the broth, Ky.