where ivan will go.....

[BUD]

how long will it be before we know if and when ivan will hit the southeast coast

[hurricane_lover]

Bud, how old are you? I grew up in NMB.

[MWatkins]

how long will it be before we know if and when ivan will hit the southeast coast

We need another 2 days and a bigtime reprogramming effort for GFS (Guessing Forecast System). The last 3 runs of the model have flip-flopped more times than Michael Dukakis ever did.

Actually...we will have a synoptic mission tomorrow night and this may help us get a handle on the future track.

MW

[SwampDawg]

I'm just curious...if the models flip flop so much, why do we put so much faith in these things??

[MWatkins]

I'm just curious...if the models flip flop so much, why do we put so much faith in these things??

Well...right now it's only the GFS model that is doing the flopping and no one bought it's solution of turing Frances into a 500MB ridge.

Well...for the most part no one. There are some model huggers out there.

The assertion that "the models" always trusted is an urban legend. If you look somewhere a few weeks ago..when the models called for recurvature of Frances when it first developed...I had a big rant about synoptic scale meteorology. I am not a model hugger...I don't think.

MW

[SwampDawg]

awww...come on Mike...Give the model a hug. Just Kidding...LOL. Thanks for the reply

[BUD]

Bud, how old are you? I grew up in NMB.

I am 29 years old and been here and not going no where no time soon.

[AussieMark]

Just hope its not Hispaniola as we could see a hefty death toll if he hits there as a strong 3 minimum.

[B-Bear]

I'm just curious...if the models flip flop so much, why do we put so much faith in these things??

I think that perhaps we give inappropriate credence to models at times. First of all, none of them are stellar at predicting a storm 5 days out. Additionally, they were all designed to make forecast predictions predicated on different things--strength of storm, latitude, etc. So each of them, in theory, has its strengths and weaknesses. Yet when using them to make predictions, even the NHC often lumps them all together and uses an average of their forecasts to make its own predictions. I'm not sure that is so wise. It would make more sense, IMHO, to attempt to isolate models for their particular strength and use them as appropriate. For example, it would be interesting to see if a model designed to track lower latitude storms might perform better than others right now, or if a model designed to track higher intensity hurricanes might perform better than others right now. Perhaps a combination of those two types of models might perform better right now.

That's how we should be trying to use the models, IMO. I'm not a professional met, so I don't know how realistic that is. But lumping all the models together and using an average of their forecast tracks and intensities doesn' t make a lot of sense to me.