Notable Model Debacles and Busts?

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aspen
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Re: Notable Model Debacles and Busts?

#21 Postby aspen » Thu Jun 30, 2022 7:51 pm

skyline385 wrote:Probably can add PTC2 2022 to this list, all the models were so bullish on it. The EURO at one point had a major in play and so many EPS and GEFS members were on board, meanwhile it’s still missing an LLC.

Probably one of the biggest model busts of the last decade because it took the southernmost possible track, when the vast majority of ensemble members and model runs kept it north enough to develop as early as the Lesser Antilles. Between this and Elsa, it is becoming even more remarkable that Emily ‘05 was ever able to become a July Caribbean Cruiser; seems like it is very difficult for steering patterns to be just right to allow such a track that doesn’t get the system tangled up in the Greater Antilles or South America.

The only Atlantic storm that took so long to become anything that I can recall is Hermine ‘16. I wasn’t on s2k back then, but didn’t it spend over a week as an invest? I can now probably understand the boredom and annoyance here during Hermine’s development.
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Re: Notable Model Debacles and Busts?

#22 Postby al78 » Fri Jul 01, 2022 3:42 am

Hurricane Debbie 2000. Advisories repeatedly forecast it to strengthen to a cat 2 hurricane and head for south Florida. It ended up falling apart near the Greater Antilles.

Joyce 2000. Again, repeatedly forecast to strengthen to a cat 2 whilst moving across the MDR and into the Caribbean sea. Barely made it to the Leeward islands as a weakening tropical depression.

The struggling of MDR storms in 2000 was noted as unusual in Phil Klotzbach's seasonal forecast verification document, which he put down to a persistent TUTT over the MDR.
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Re: Notable Model Debacles and Busts?

#23 Postby Zonacane » Fri Jul 01, 2022 11:58 pm

Category5Kaiju wrote:What were some of the biggest model busts in the past that you remember to this day? For instance, a time when the GFS insisted on a storm happening and the Euro thinking the opposite persistently, only for the GFS to end up right and the Euro to end up wrong (and vice versa)? Or a time when both model runs completely failed to detect genesis or a time when they detected genesis, only for the storm to end up much more powerful than the models thought or end up in a radically different location?

Almost all of 2020
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Re: Notable Model Debacles and Busts?

#24 Postby FireRat » Sat Jul 02, 2022 2:56 am

al78 wrote:Hurricane Debbie 2000. Advisories repeatedly forecast it to strengthen to a cat 2 hurricane and head for south Florida. It ended up falling apart near the Greater Antilles.

Joyce 2000. Again, repeatedly forecast to strengthen to a cat 2 whilst moving across the MDR and into the Caribbean sea. Barely made it to the Leeward islands as a weakening tropical depression.

The struggling of MDR storms in 2000 was noted as unusual in Phil Klotzbach's seasonal forecast verification document, which he put down to a persistent TUTT over the MDR.


I remember watching the local news regarding Debbie then when I lived down in Fort Lauderdale, they were showing Debbie getting up to 145 mph and nearing South Florida at that Cat 4 intensity, we were in the middle of the cone, talk about a massive, but fortunate, bust and a close call.
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Re: Notable Model Debacles and Busts?

#25 Postby al78 » Sat Jul 16, 2022 7:54 am

If we are allowed to go outside the Atlantic, cyclone Winston in 2016. It crossed the date line, the JTWC forecast it to continue moving east before turing slowly SE and south over the course of five days. What happened was it fell in love with Fiji and took a hard near 180 degree turn straight for it, making landfall a few days later. The 5 day JTWC positional errors were over 1,500 km at their worst. It turned out to be a case of two possible anticyclones which could dominate the steering, and the models went for the wrong one. Most of the track of Winston was erratic and the models did an unusually poor job with it.
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Re: Notable Model Debacles and Busts?

#26 Postby MGC » Sun Jul 17, 2022 1:04 pm

For me it was Katrina in 2005. Models had it going up the spine of Florida......MGC
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Re: Notable Model Debacles and Busts?

#27 Postby Cat5James » Sun Jul 17, 2022 1:12 pm

Dorian ‘19 being shredded over Hispaniola. We know how that turned out.
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Re: Notable Model Debacles and Busts?

#28 Postby skyline385 » Sun Jul 17, 2022 1:42 pm

Cat5James wrote:Dorian ‘19 being shredded over Hispaniola. We know how that turned out.


Don't think that was a model bust, center relocations are impossibly hard to predict. There were actually a couple of HWRF early on which accurately predicted it bombing out.
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Re: Notable Model Debacles and Busts?

#29 Postby aspen » Mon Jul 18, 2022 5:41 am

Add Estelle to the list of La Niña EPac storms overhyped by the GFS. At least the HWRF was right about a large, shear-disrupted structure and a peak as a strong Cat 1.
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Re: Notable Model Debacles and Busts?

#30 Postby skyline385 » Mon Jul 18, 2022 6:49 am

aspen wrote:Add Estelle to the list of La Niña EPac storms overhyped by the GFS. At least the HWRF was right about a large, shear-disrupted structure and a peak as a strong Cat 1.


EURO and ICON had some big runs for Estelle as well
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Re: Notable Model Debacles and Busts?

#31 Postby toad strangler » Mon Jul 18, 2022 6:55 am

Cat5James wrote:Dorian ‘19 being shredded over Hispaniola. We know how that turned out.


Dorian not blasting through the FL peninsula and even possibly making a 2nd landfall in the panhandle was a very kind modeling oopsy. To the US ... The Bahamians have another opinion.
Last edited by toad strangler on Mon Jul 18, 2022 10:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Notable Model Debacles and Busts?

#32 Postby InfernoFlameCat » Mon Jul 18, 2022 9:34 am

Hurricane Lorenzo second round of intensification into a cat 5 was a huge one for me. No model or human alike saw that happening.
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Re: Notable Model Debacles and Busts?

#33 Postby 115MphAgatha » Mon Jul 18, 2022 4:04 pm

I'd like to nominate Estelle, this year. Forecast called for 115 mph C3. Shear took quite the toll on the storm and it's probably already peaked, as a mid C1. Truly a Pamela style bust.
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Re: Notable Model Debacles and Busts?

#34 Postby 115MphAgatha » Wed Aug 03, 2022 8:43 am

115MphAgatha wrote:I'd like to nominate Estelle Frank, this year. Forecast called for 115 mph C3. Shear took quite the toll on the storm and it peaked as a mid C1. Truly a Pamela style bust.


I did not expect it to happen again immediately following the previous bust.
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Re: Notable Model Debacles and Busts?

#35 Postby aspen » Wed Aug 03, 2022 9:36 am

115MphAgatha wrote:
115MphAgatha wrote:I'd like to nominate Estelle Frank, this year. Forecast called for 115 mph C3. Shear took quite the toll on the storm and it peaked as a mid C1. Truly a Pamela style bust.


I did not expect it to happen again immediately following the previous bust.

The NHC was more conservative early on, but then it looked like Frank was RI’ing with dual rotating hot towers. Then dry air got in. That was the real problem, not shear.

The HWRF actually did a pretty good job forecasting both Estelle and Frank as struggling Hurricanes with dry air problems, large circulations/cores, and a peak in the 970s.
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Re: Notable Model Debacles and Busts?

#36 Postby 115MphAgatha » Wed Aug 03, 2022 9:46 am

aspen wrote:
115MphAgatha wrote:
115MphAgatha wrote:I'd like to nominate Estelle Frank, this year. Forecast called for 115 mph C3. Shear took quite the toll on the storm and it peaked as a mid C1. Truly a Pamela style bust.


I did not expect it to happen again immediately following the previous bust.

The NHC was more conservative early on, but then it looked like Frank was RI’ing with dual rotating hot towers. Then dry air got in. That was the real problem, not shear.

The HWRF actually did a pretty good job forecasting both Estelle and Frank as struggling Hurricanes with dry air problems, large circulations/cores, and a peak in the 970s.


Ah, yes the models got them decently, I was more referring to them busting in NHC's forecasts.
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Re: Notable Model Debacles and Busts?

#37 Postby underthwx » Wed Aug 03, 2022 10:04 am

Would Hurricane Ike qualify? I seem to remember the Euro had Ike striking New York city as a major hurricane early on in Ikes lifetime, then Ikes track changing frequently with almost every update. Please correct me if I am wrong, but Ike stands out to me as an erratic cyclone.
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Re: Notable Model Debacles and Busts?

#38 Postby Stormcenter » Wed Aug 03, 2022 11:47 am

I agree with this one.


underthwx wrote:Would Hurricane Ike qualify? I seem to remember the Euro had Ike striking New York city as a major hurricane early on in Ikes lifetime, then Ikes track changing frequently with almost every update. Please correct me if I am wrong, but Ike stands out to me as an erratic cyclone.
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Re: Notable Model Debacles and Busts?

#39 Postby InfernoFlameCat » Wed Aug 03, 2022 12:00 pm

aspen wrote:
115MphAgatha wrote:
115MphAgatha wrote:I'd like to nominate Estelle Frank, this year. Forecast called for 115 mph C3. Shear took quite the toll on the storm and it peaked as a mid C1. Truly a Pamela style bust.


I did not expect it to happen again immediately following the previous bust.

The NHC was more conservative early on, but then it looked like Frank was RI’ing with dual rotating hot towers. Then dry air got in. That was the real problem, not shear.

The HWRF actually did a pretty good job forecasting both Estelle and Frank as struggling Hurricanes with dry air problems, large circulations/cores, and a peak in the 970s.
Yeah, you called it out before it happened. I doubted you but you were exactly right. I busted on Estelle too.
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Re: Notable Model Debacles and Busts?

#40 Postby jasons2k » Wed Aug 03, 2022 12:39 pm

Some older ones that come to mind for me include:

Elena 1985: At one time it was going to plow into Tampa and turned again. This storm gave everyone a headache.

Floyd 1999: Largest evacuation in US history for nothing.

Debby 2000: The Keys evacuated for nothing. My dad stayed though - he stayed for Georges '98. Wilma '05 too.

Isidore 2002: Just couldn't let go of the margaritas down in the Yucatan.

Lili 2002: We went on our Honeymoon cruise and left our car parked in Galveston on the 29th. I expected the car to flood with a Cat. 4 hitting Galveston while we were gone. The cruise was interesting navigating around the storm and one night we got rocked so bad the pool water was sloshing up on the deck. Lili fell apart just before landfall and began a pattern of skeleton "half storms" we saw with several subsequent storms making LF in Louisiana.

Charley 2004: I thought my hometown (Tampa) was finally toast. Nailed Bokeelia & Punta Gorda instead.

Katrina 2005: Was going into the FL Panhandle at first. The GFDL made its mark for nailing the SW swing and strengthening over the Everglades; some thought it was a new era in Hi-Res modeling. Next thing, the model was trash.

Rita 2005: Third-largest peacetime evacuation in history for nothing. More people died from the evacuation than from the actual storm. Another "half hurricane" by landfall.

Ernesto 2006: Kept reforming to the NE and never stopped.

Chris 2006: Thought it would get into the Gulf and develop into a monster - never even made it to the Gulf.

Ike 2008: Ike was supposed to be an East Coast Storm...then it was supposed to explode in the Gulf but never could get its core back together after Cuba.
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