The NHC Deserves A Round Of Applause & Standing Ovation

[Guest]

& some of you should be booed off the stage!

With the so called bad job that the NHC did with Charley they rose to the occasion with one of the best forecasting jobs that I can recall with Frances.The NHC had Frances moving into the Ft.Pierce area as early as 3-4 days before & that is exactly where she went. There were a few hiccups along the way like the hurricane stalling but even this slow down was predicted..I hope this serves as a lesson well learned for "some" of you out here that try to out smart the NHC & issue their own forecasts &/or wishcasts which are completely different from NHC as if they had access to their own secret computer model & knew sonething NHC did'nt.Notice I said "some"..Many of you know what you are doing & put out a fairly accurate forcast..Having said that this was one of the most consistent & accurate forecast the the NHC has ever put out..They practicly reeled this baby in.

The NHC will make mistakes in the future but I hope the general public & those of you new to this hobby of hurricane tracking make the NHC your #1 source when it comes to forecasting hurricanes & take "some" of these internet forecasters with a grain or better yet mouintain of salt.

I would also like to mention those apart from the NHC that did your homework & did a great job as well...Congradulations & people will benifit from your knowledge in the future.

[Agua]

Quite honestly, just going from memory, and I realize this opens me up for deserved slamming, but, NHC didn't do very hot beyond the 3 day. And that's understandable: they explicityly state large error at that point.

However, there were folks who post here who came closer 5 days out than NHC's guidance.

[~SirCane]

They did decent-but that's the best you can do with Hurricanes I think. We'll see what happens with her in the Gulf.

[bahamaswx]

I am in no way trying to put down the NHC--but it is much easier to forecast TC tracks if they're not being picked up and recurved by troughs.

[Thunder44]

TPC has so far been great with this storm track. I keep seeing people post on here about the storm going off track with every wobble it takes, or movement it doesn't take. But they really didn't know what they were talking about. I also thought their track of Charley was good, despite making landfall a bit further south Tampa.

The intensity at landfall for Frances was much weaker than they predicted, though have admitted that they don't well with their intensity forecasts. So overall I do think they deserve much praise with Frances, so far.

[Aquawind]

Considering the weak strearing pattern slowdown and model confusion..They did a great job as usual..They really opened the door with the 5 day forecast..Three days is tough enough..Wobbles, Jogs and Slowdowns considered they did a good job of telling the right people to prepare and got the word out...

[SootyTern]

I'm with MIA Canetrakker...thought NHC did great with Frances track. I tracked her old-school on my tracking chart and I put a dot at 24.0 75.5 on Aug 8/28 at 1700...where she came in relative to this seemed important to me and my prep at the time. This was the 5-day projection from that date and she was actually at 24.1 74.8 or something close to that late on 9/2. That seems pretty good from 5 days out, with all that could happen. They never changed their track radically even though models were going back and forth, and their conservatism paid off ultimately. They weren't that far off with Charley, either; they stressed the cone of error and it was ( I guess) spun by west coast media as a Tampa hit and not elsewhere. I can understand the need to keep Tampa area people ready and preparing for the worst since it is a dense urban area and prep would take a long time. That was what Dade Co did, and I have yet to find a person who is P'O'd that they shuttered for no reason. That is what you WANT to happen...

Track of Ivan has me concerned. My concern will increase later in the week if the NHC track stays the same; on the other hand, I have my supplies already and haven't dipped into them much since we didn't even lose power. Palm outside one last partially unshuttered window is still now for the first time in 3 days. All things come to an end eventually....

[Guest]

Quite honestly, just going from memory, and I realize this opens me up for deserved slamming, but, NHC didn't do very hot beyond the 3 day. And that's understandable: they explicityly state large error at that point.

However, there were folks who post here who came closer 5 days out than NHC's guidance.

Sorry but NO folks here came closer & this forecasts was more than "decent".


I'll take the NHC beyond 3 day forecasts over any other source out there,some may see other wise but thats life.

[Hurricanehink]

Wow!
Good job NHC.