Storm: Hurricane intensity difficult to forecast

You should keep in mind two important things about hurricane forecasting this year.

First, forecasting the path of a hurricane has improved greatly over the past two decades.

Sure, some storms will surprise us. No computer is going to predict the weird paths and loops hurricanes can take. But hurricanes usually end up within the "forecast cone," which gets more accurate as a storm nears.

The average error from 2004-2008 ranged from 263 nautical miles 120 hours out to 32 miles 12 hours out. The average was about 250 nautical miles.

That's still a lot of uncertainty, and it's why we tell you not to focus on the skinny line at the center of the cone.

Now for the second important point: Forecasting the intensity of a storm is tough.

National Hurricane Center director Bill Read discussed the lack of skill in predicting intensity at this year's national hurricane conference.

Actually, the hurricane center has no skill at all if you define it as having a better chance of being right than you would from flipping a coin.

Although the forecast for one storm might be accurate, the reality is that meteorology has not advanced much in forecasting intensity. That's a tough pill to swallow, considering how much research has been done and how much better tracking forecasts have gotten.

The concern of meteorologists is that people living in vulnerable areas make life-and-death decisions based on these shaky forecasts.

When Hurricane Ike came ashore in 2008, the storm's incredible surge removed all structures from the barrier islands that weren't protected by sea walls. A man interviewed on TV in Galveston, Texas before the hurricane hit he was staying because Ike was "only a Category 2" but would leave if it became a Category 3. At the time, Ike was just 1 mph below a Category 3.

He wasted valuable evacuation time and risked his life because of 1 mph?

(Mike Clay is Bay News 9 Chief Meteorologist in the Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla. area.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service www.scrippsnews.com)

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