Thread: 2008 forcast

With 64 days left before hurricane season officially starts, we have one forecast released Noted U.S. hurricane forecaster expects busy season - Yahoo! News

and Dr Gray will release his forecast next week!!

Hurricane predictions for 2008 are 15 named Storms, 8 hurricanes, 4 of those intense!! 52 days till hurricane season starts!!

And, that's an increase from the numbers they came out with in December. (sigh)

They are here somewhere in another thread. I'll find them and copy them here.

Here's what the December forecast looked like:

Named Storms . . . . . . . . . . 13 . . . (9.6)*
Named Storm Days . . . . . . . 60 . . . (49.1)
Hurricanes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 . . . (5.9)
Hurricane Days . . . . . . . . . .30 . . .(24.5)
Intense Hurricanes . . . . . . . .3 . . .(2.3)
Intense Hurricane Days . . . . . 6 . . .(5.0)

*Number in parenthesis is the climatalogical average for the years 1950 - 2000

And here's the comparison to the new numbers

----------------------------------DEC------AVG ------APRIL

Named Storms . . . . . . . . . . 13 . . . (9.6)* . . . . 15
Named Storm Days . . . . . . . 60 . . . (49.1) . . . . . . 80
Hurricanes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 . . . (5.9) . . . . . . . . 8
Hurricane Days . . . . . . . . . .30 . . .(24.5) . . . . . . . 40
Intense Hurricanes . . . . . . . .3 . . .(2.3) . . . . . . . . . 4
Intense Hurricane Days . . . . . 6 . . .(5.0) . . . . . . . . 9

And here's a comparison of the two forecasts for landfall location probabilities:

Probabilities for at least One Major Landfalling Hurricane:

1) Entire US coastline - DEC: 60% ... APR: 69% ... (AVG: 52%)*

2) US East Coast, including Peninsular Florida - DEC: 37% ... APR: 45% ... (AVG: 31%)

3) Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle to Brownsville - DEC: 36% ... APR 44% ... (AVG: 30%)

4) Above major landfall risk in the Caribbean (unchanged from Dec)


* Average for the last century

Even though the numbers that came out today represent a fairly dramatic increase from the ones we saw in December, there is really no reason to get excited. There's not a lot of accuracy this far in advance.

In fact, here's an interesting excerpt from Dr Jeff Masters' blog about that very thing:

Today's forecast includes the statement, "These real-time operational early April forecasts have not shown forecast skill over climatology" during the 13-year period 1995-2007. In other words, today's forecast has no skill, and should merely be viewed as an interesting experimental research product. I like the fact that they are trying to make useful seasonal hurricane forecasts, but we should wait until their June 3 forecast before putting faith in their 2008 hurricane season forecasts.

For the entire Masters blog entry for today, see: Wunder Blog : Weather Underground

Could you please arrange to not have one from 9/5 to 9/14.

Oh, sure... Sue and I will go to work on that right away, Bliz!



Any other simple little requests?

As long as you are at it, keep them away 10/23/08 - 10/26/08, first cruise and all. Thank you in advance.