Friday, September 14, 2007

THE TROPICAL CYCLONE IS STARING DOWN THE BARREL OF A GUN


New York wasn't threatened at all last year, and Ingrid's really the first tropical cyclone to have a chance of hitting it in 2007. That said, the forecasters to date have been pretty negative about it's chances.

But, still. One the one hand, the forecast discussion reads
A NOAA HURRICANE HUNTER HAS BEEN FLYING THROUGH INGRID TONIGHT AND FOUND A RATHER POORLY ORGANIZED SYSTEM.... SOME WEAKENING IS FORECAST AND IT SEEMS LIKELY THAT INGRID WILL ... POSSIBLY DISSIPATE DURING THIS TIME.

And on the other, the actual forecast probabilities are
, which is to say Ingrid dissipating -- which doesn't affect our daily lives -- is only three times as large as Ingrid becoming a Category 1 Hurricane, which could be the path to a lot of badness and is itself well within the 95 % confidence level we supposedly use to determine whether or not to worry about stuff.

Do you remember 2005? How depression after depression were supposed to snuff themselves out, but instead became roaring storms? Have we changed our models since then? The storms this year seem to generally be forming in the West and smashing themselves against foreign countries like Mexico and Texas. Ingrid, I fear, represents, if you will, a sea change.

1 comment:

Rionn Fears Malechem said...

Ah ... I thought blogger would copy that matrix, not link to it. It was saying 30 % chance of dissipation, 10 % chance of Category 1 Hurricane. In a yet later publication, the latter probability went up to 15 %.