Trying To Reason With Hurricane Season

Tomorrow is the last day of the "official" Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to November 30 of each year. (What happens to out of "season" hurricanes? Presumably they are cited and fined by FEMA following a lengthy administrative hearing .)

So how did the nation's leading hurricane forecasters do this year? Not very good. Almost as bad as last year. In fact, we wonder why the media bother to give their forecasts such wide play--you could do just about as well by surveying Mrs. Smith's kindergarten class.

In our May 23, 2006 post, entitled "Truth in Hurricane Forecasting," we noted that this season's hurricane forecasts should come with a disclaimer pointing out that the 2005 forecast was so far off that you might not want to put much stock in the same folks' prediction for this year.

We were right. This year, the forecasters erred in the other direction. With blaring headlines, NOAA's team of alleged hurricane experts told us that this year would be an unusually active one, with 13-16 tropical storms, of which 8-10 would become hurricanes, 4-6 of which would be "major" hurricanes (Category 3 or greater). The alleged experts on William Gray's team at Colorado State issued a similar forecast, predicting 17 storms of which 9 would be hurricanes.

Well, they were wrong. AGAIN. Really, they weren't even close. Instead, it was a mild hurricane season with 9 tropical storms, of which 5 became hurricanes, two of which were "major." Ho-hum.

Well, so why'd they get it wrong? The experts say it's mainly because of the "unexpected formation" of the El Nino in the eastern Pacific, and perhaps also an "unusual" amount of sub-Saharan dust over the Atlantic. Well, gee--if we'd known those things were going to happen, we'd hardly need any experts to tell us it would turn out to be a dull tropical year. It's the experts' job to forecast those events.

Here's a different way to put it: the so-called hurricane experts really don't know any more about hurricane forecasting than the rest of us. For all their computer projecting and modelling, all they can really do is make an educated guess. Usually, they try to stay near historic averages, figuring that way they can't be too far off the mark and will often be correct (in an average year). What good is that?

If the hurricane experts had correctly forecast, in May '05, that we'd have a record tropical year, it would've been worth something. Better preparations could've been made. (We're not saying they would've been made--after all, we're talking about the most incompetent administration since Calvin Coolidge.) Likewise, an accurate forecast in May of this year that we'd have a snorer of a season would also have been useful.

Next Spring, when these same experts put out another prediction, we hope the media will include a healthy dose of skepticism in their reports.