By Ken Kaye
Staff Writer
Posted November 27 2004
Instead of the skinny black line, showing a hurricane's forecast track, forecasters have drafted a couple of alternative graphics to depict where the storms might go -- and they want your opinion.
Three options are to be posted on the National Hurricane Center's Web site -- http://www.nhc.noaa.gov -- possibly by Wednesday or within the next few weeks, and the public will be invited to comment.
One option shows only the cone of uncertainty and dots, marking a storm's forecast position over a five-day period. Another: Circles within the cone of uncertainty, illustrating potential strike zones for given time periods.
The third option: keep the line as is.
The hurricane center's graphics are seen by millions of residents either on its Web site, on television or in newspapers.
With hurricane season ending Tuesday, officials are considering a change because too many people trusted the black line when Hurricane Charley initially aimed toward Tampa but made an unexpected turn into Punta Gorda in August.
Many residents focused on the line's landfall position and were caught off guard, said Scott Kiser, tropical cyclone manager at the National Weather Service headquarters in Silver Spring, Md.
Forecasters would prefer residents pay close attention to the cone of uncertainty, which shows a much broader potential strike area.
"I don't want to emphasize the landfall point two or three days in advance," Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, said Friday. "If you know what the black line means and how to use it, there's no problem. But some people don't know how to use it."
The two new options have problems as well, officials said. The circles might be confusing because, particularly with a slow-moving system, they would intersect.
Showing just dots also might be baffling, particularly with a storm that loops, as did Hurricane Jeanne before it bashed Florida in September.
"If a storm stalls or loops it can almost look like [a] dartboard," Mayfield said.
The National Weather Service, which oversees the hurricane center, plans to select one of the three options by the June 1 start of hurricane season. It also is seeking input from emergency managers, TV meteorologists and the media.
Mayfield said he doesn't have a preference but noted that whatever alternative is selected will be a "short-term solution."
The reason: All three options are based on a storm's geometric center, or a very small point, while hurricanes are huge systems and can cause destruction for hundreds of miles on either side of a track.
In the next two years, the weather service hopes to generate graphics that would show probabilities for a hurricane's track, as well as its intensity and its size, Mayfield said.
"There would be no reason to have a center line at all," he said.
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