Blown Away wrote:caneman wrote:Blown Away wrote:
Nah man, can’t make any definitive decisions that narrow 3-4 days out. I always like to throw climatology in the mix, and a direct MH landfall between Englewood to Tampa is very rare. ATM, looks like that may change, but still plenty of time to shift 100 miles in any direction.
We will see. I'm not a big climatology as we don't have enough history and data set and each year and each storm adds a new mix to climatology and new firsts.
No doubt, climatology for MH for Tampa being tested here with the current model runs.
If it’s been over a 100 years since it last happened, I’m betting against it.
I agree with this sentiment, Blown Away. I hope this isn't too off topic here- but I'll always bet against a direct strike (as in, directly under the eye) on any specific city this far out, just because the odds of having a relatively small eye pass over any specific and relatively small geographic location are quite low. Ultimately, there is going to be one place on the coast that falls directly under the eye during landfall, and probability-wise, it's undoubtedly a safer bet to go with the "somewhere-other-than-(insert city here)" option rather than the "directly-into-(city)" option due to this.
Climatology takes this even further by essentially setting the odds due to our historical records; the caveat of course being that in the grand history of hurricanes making landfall along the coasts of North America, our historical records are but a fraction of a second on the geologic clock. Our brief and limited history suggests a landfall into Tampa is very rare, so this makes the somewhere-other-than-Tampa option even more appealing, from a "betting" perspective.
Ultimately though, at the end of the day, each storm is an event of independent probability; one that's not influenced by past results. Just because something hasn't happened in a long time, or even recorded history, doesn't mean that influences the outcome of any given hurricane. Rare events are rare until they occur, records are records until they're broken, etc, etc. Climo gives us some odds, but doesn't influence the outcome... just ask the residents of Keaton Beach in the Big Bend. I'll bet against rare, but eventually rare is going to come back and bite you (...if there are any college football fans here... i.e. Vanderbilt yesterday). Ultimately Milton may be the first major to landfall over St.Pete/Tampa in 100 years, or it may not be... but hey, if we could predict history... what would be the point of watching these models?
Note: I don't want this to come across as me downplaying the impacts of Milton away from the area of direct landfall. Surge will be a big problem far away from the center, and everyone under the model spread from Naples to Cedar Key should be monitoring this situation carefully.
