Wall Street Journal piece on hurricane forecasting

[mitchell]

A negative account on the success of hurricane forecasting from yesterdays WSJ:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124096550135766317.html

[margiek]

I've seen several instances of opinionated journalism that ignores the facts from the WSJ, regards some stories they've had in the past on various aspects of hurricane news, but this really burnt me up. I emailed the writer and received a reply even snarkier than Bastardi's quote: "Readers can decide whether ... the concern that one arm of NOAA is naming storms with an eye on the success of outlooks of another arm, is legitimate." This guy is aggressively pushing the claim that NHC doctors their operational forecasts to support CPC's seasonal hurricane predictions.

What a load of hooey.

He apparently doesn't know enough math to know that CPC's predictions are so general (and especially starting with the percentages last year) that there's hardly any way they cannot verify.

[somethingfunny]

I don't really agree with that last controversial point either. Although it is vexing why some storms like Andrea, Ingrid, Jerry, and Melissa were named in 2007, or Arthur last year..the seemingly pointless naming of 2005's Lee kind of negates that conspiracy theory as it wouldn't have helped to meet any sort of "storm quota" that year. I don't necesarily agree with the new naming practices...prefering an inconsequential storm to be named in post-analysis like 2006's Storm #2....but the "conspiracy" is ridiculous. I could easily accuse the Accuweather lobby of an equally insidious conspiracy to cut NHC funding and give credibility to private forecasting firms. But I prefer not to give either one any credence.

That being said,
I don't like pre-season forecasts at all. Yes, they're fun for us as casual weather watchers (of different levels) to read and debate, but when "professional" climatologists publicize a pre-season forecast, it leads to awful overreactions by authorities and the public, overreactions that have serious consequences; for instance the decision by Florida's water management to release water from Lake Okeechobee in anticipation of another above-normal season in 2006, or decisions by insurance companies and the like to raise premiums or pull out; entirely based on what Gray/Klotzbach are thinking in April. And then even with those consequences, the fact remains that even if a season is below average, the mantra is "it only takes one", like Hurricane Andrew.

So, to me, pre-season forecasts are really completely pointless, from every angle. I don't mind doing research on the topic, but publicizing them? Absolutely pointless, and sometimes dangerous.