More Hurricane Center Tumult

Wow! Bill Roenza’s gotta go as the director of the National Hurricane Center.

I didn’t think so when I wrote an entry on Tuesday, but the Miami Herald has advanced its earlier story with additional comments from lead forecasters. There’s no internal confidence for Proenza from those guys.

‘I don’t think that Bill can continue here,” said James Franklin, one of five senior forecasters at the center. “I don’t think he can be an effective leader.”

Two others — Richard Pasch and Rick Knabb — told The Miami Herald that they concur.

”We need a change of leadership here at the hurricane center,” Pasch said. “It’s pretty much as simple as that.”

Part of what Proenza did was plead for a replacement for the soon-to-die Quickscat satellite. Then he quantified a value NHC’s accuracy would fall if Quickscat was gone.

I thought his number was way off mark then. The hurricane forecasters at NHC seem to agree.

Obviously, every piece of observational equipment is important, but by the time a storm threatens land there are better tools than Quickscat, which only covers a given area a few times a day.

If you’re NOAA, can you promote one of the insiders to replace Proenza (if he goes)? Doesn’t that just legitimize this mutiny?

This story’s not over.

Storms At The Hurricane Center

It looks like the boss is starting a paper trail on National Hurricane Center Director Bill Proenza. When Proenza criticized NOAA’s budget for anniversary celebrations, saying it was taking money away from a satellite project that affected accuracy… I think that’s when we entered the “don’t get angry, get even,” stage of employment.

I don’t know much about Proenza, but what I’ve heard has been positive. Coming to run NHC from elsewhere in the Weather Service must be tough. It is, by far, the most visible job in the Weather Service.

There is incredible pressure to forecast at levels beyond our present scientific capability. Wouldn’t that be the definition of pressure?

While all this tumult is going on upstairs, downstairs at least one forecaster seems to be throwing Proenza under the bus. This is from today’s Miami Herald in an article titled, “Pressure builds for storm chief” :

Meanwhile, for the first time, one of Proenza’s hurricane forecasters expressed public concern about some of Proenza’s actions since he took the job in January.

Lixion Avila, a lead forecaster and a center employee for more than 20 years, said he believes Proenza meant well but unintentionally has undermined public faith in hurricane forecasts.

Avila goes on to blame Proenza for something Avila acknowledges isn’t what was actually said. It’s getting messy.

Is this jealousy from a PhD whose boss is just a mister? It wouldn’t be the first time. Most of Proenza’s lead forecasters do have greater academic credentials than he does.

June and July, though part of the hurricane season, are normally quiet months in the tropics. It’s not until mid-August that things begin to get busy. I hope, by then, the Hurricane Center will be able to concentrate on hurricanes.

More Beryl

My partner-in-crime at the TV station, who is pronouncing Beryl differently than I am, sent me this today:

Geoff,

The National Hurricane Center sent out a pronunciation for Beryl…said it was like Milton Berle. Arlene’s middle name is Beryl, and she and her family always pronounced her name likewise. So, who am I to argue?

Dr. Mel

In this case, Arlene is Dr. Mel’s wife. Doesn’t this make her a Beryl expert? So, I was going to go back to Beryl said as “burl,” when I got this.

Hello Geoff,

Just a quick note to say how much I enjoy watching your weather reports! I was interested to hear the discussions about how to pronounce ‘Beryl’ because I too have a friend and you pronounced it correctly! I am from England and have lived in CT for three years. I find many words pronounced differently here but expected everyone to be able to say Beryl correctly! BERril!!

And then this.

To add fuel to the fire, how do we pronounce the great actress Meryl Streep’s name?

The official hurricane list of names doesn’t repeat for another seven years. Even that’s too soon!

Email To AirTran

I sent this email to AirTran’s president, Joe Leonard, about 25 minutes before my folks told me they had broken down and spent an extra few hundred dollars purchasing tickets to Vegas on Saturday (thereby avoiding Hurricane Wilma’s fury).

Dear Mr. Leonard,

I am writing to ask you to revisit AirTran’s current policy regarding Hurricane Wilma rebooking. I am a meteorologist with 25 years experience.

Your website’s weather update page gives latitude to Florida travelers on Monday, but the storm is not forecast to leave Florida’s East Coast until very late Monday or early Tuesday – meaning you will have planes out of position for Tuesday’s flights.

This is from the National Hurricane Center’s latest technical discussion (meteorologist-to-meteorologist):

THE SPREAD IN THE MODELS REMAINS QUITE LARGE… AND BOTH THE

LOCATION AND TIMING OF THE IMPACTS ON FLORIDA REMAIN VERY

UNCERTAIN.

Won’t you consider allowing Tuesday passengers (like my parents, on their way to Las Vegas for my dad’s 80th birthday) to rebook without additional charge? Think of your passengers… and your gate and counter employees, who will be dealing with people who were denied rebooking and then face canceled flights!

Sincerely,

Geoff Fox

The point is probably moot now. I’m curious if I’ll get an answer.

Hurricane Center Disappointment

The Miami Herald has undertaken a multipart study of the National Hurricane Center and related tropical prediction facilities run by NOAA. I have just read whatever is already on line and I am shocked… maybe sickened is a better word.

Many things I thought were well taken care of, are not.

Equipment doesn’t work or isn’t designed correctly. Budgets are (in my opinion) improperly allocated. What should be considered incredibly important is allowed to take a back seat.

I know some people at NHC. They are impressive. But, predicting tropical weather is complex. A full data set is incredibly important.

Katrina was a forecasting success, but there have been so many forecasting errors. Forecast errors are costly in dollars and lives.

Here’s a good starting off point, but this story is divided into a bunch of pages and will continue through this week.

Katrina Shifts West Again

Earlier this afternoon, before the Hurricane Center issued its 5:00 PM update on Katrina, I sent an instant message to my friend Bob at FSU. I told him I was putting up a dollar that Katrina’s forecast would be shifted left.

It was.

I had the exact same feeling tonight… and NHC moved it again.

Maybe feeling is the wrong word, because this isn’t intuition or guesswork. I could see signs. The storm was refusing to make the predicted right turn. In fact, it was traveling south of west.

To the north there was some sort of convergence. Feeder bands from the hurricane were meeting something moving from the north. Clouds were showing up bright white – a sign they were developing vertically.

Whatever it was to the north, it would impede that right turn forecast at the Hurricane Center.

I’m sure I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating. The best hurricane information is often contained in the forecaster’s technical discussion. These really were meant to be ‘internal use only’ documents, but you can’t do that when you work for the government.

In these the lead forecaster discusses what has gone into the latest forecast package. I’m sure it’s very helpful at NHC after the hurricane season is over or whenever post mortems are done.

I’ll attach tonight’s at the end of this message so you can get a feel for yourself. This one was written by Dr. Lixion Avila, one of NHC’s hurricane specialists. Four of the six specialists are Ph D’s. This is specialized work.

Sometimes, I sense, things are thrown in with the understanding that it’s more than meteorologists reading.

KATRINA IS FORECAST TO MOVE DIRECTLY OVER THE WARM

LOOP CURRENT OF THE GULF OF MEXICO…WHICH IS LIKE ADDING HIGH

OCTANE FUEL TO THE FIRE

No one trained in weather needed that line. Some surface water in the Northern Gulf of Mexico is 90&#17+. Without a doubt, this is a dangerous storm and getting more dangerous by the minute.

My biggest fear is Katrina will head west of New Orleans and strike the coast there. A Category 4 storm (which is the forecast) in that location would be devastating. For a variety of reasons, New Orleans is incredibly vulnerable and a strike like that would be the worst of all possible scenarios!

IT IS WORTH NOTING THAT THE GUIDANCE SPREAD HAS DECREASED AND MOST OF THE RELIABLE NUMERICAL MODEL TRACKS ARE NOW CLUSTERED BETWEEN THE EASTERN COAST OF LOUISIANA AND THE COAST OF MISSISSIPPI. THIS CLUSTERING INCREASES THE CONFIDENCE IN THE FORECAST.

Man, I hope he’s right. So far, this storm has been poorly forecast&#185. And, recently, each succeeding forecast has moved the path farther left… farther to the west.

Today alone, the center of the forecast path for landfall has moved a few hundred miles.

More on Katrina later. We have a few days with this storm at sea before the real trouble begins.

&#185 – By poorly forecast, I don’t mean NHC did a bad job. I mean the ability to forecast this particular storm was beyond the capabilities of science at the moment. Something’s there that no one can get a handle on. That we don’t know exactly why it went wrong is as troubling as it going wrong… maybe more.

Continue reading “Katrina Shifts West Again”

What We Don’t Know About Hurricanes

I always knew hurricanes were tough to predict. I just never knew how tough they were to accurately observe.

Actually, the problem is more complex than that. We’re trying to put a finite number on a system that is complex. Maybe one number is not the way to do it.

Tonight, as an example, the Hurricane Center fixed the top winds of Tropical Storm Cindy at 70 mph. Then I got this:

DURING THE PAST HOUR…AN OFFSHORE OIL PLATFORM NORTHEAST OF THE CENTER REPORTED A WIND GUST TO 99 MPH AT A HEIGHT OF 150 FT.

The 70 mph in the earlier advisory was a sustained wind figure… and from ground level, not 150 feet over the open water. Still, these numbers are so close to hurricane status that you have to wonder, why no Hurricane Watch or Warning?

Maybe the oil rig reading is too high (unlikely) or the stated wind is too low (probably). This is not to say it wasn’t 70 mph back when that number was issued. These things pulse and change rapidly.

It would also be a great stretch to assume that the only observation taken from near the center of the storm just happened to catch its highest wind. If we read 99 mph there, someplace else probably received more.

Years ago I assumed the National Hurricane Center’s published numbers were gospel. They are not. Unlike most of what’s recorded weatherwise, these ‘observation’ are really estimates – and often poor estimates. That’s not NHC’s fault necessarily. They can only work with what they’ve got and hurricanes are usually situated where observations are difficult, if not impossible.

The Hurricane Center walks a difficult path. Report a number too high and you’re calling wolf. No one will believe you the next time. Underestimate and you leave people in harm’s way.

Tonight, I think they’re on the low side and their public statements may leave people unprotected. There’s a Tropical Storm Warning on the Gulf Coast. There should be a Hurricane Warning. My friend Bob, the hurricane maven, said it before I did.

He’s right.

Even if they were to up the category right now, it’s too late to help. The storm is already affecting Louisiana and will come onshore before first light Wednesday.

Two Interesting Controversies… Well, To Me They Are

I thought I’d write about some interesting things I’ve read over the past few days.

The first seems to be a simmering controversy. It has not yet reached critical mass, but it should as soon as someone in the mainstream press catches on.

Is someone else fudging when it comes to global warming? Last week there were questions about a pro-industry push. This is just the opposite.

It starts with some comments on global warming from a respected scientist representing a respected organization

Kevin Trenberth from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) claims that warmer oceans and increased moisture could intensify showers and thunderstorms that fuel hurricanes.

“Trends in human-influenced environmental changes are now evident in hurricane regions,” Trenberth said. “These changes are expected to affect hurricane intensity and rainfall, but the effect on hurricane numbers remains unclear. The key scientific question is how hurricanes are changing.”

All well and good, except this is a conclusion and a report steeped in controversy.

Dr. Chris Landsea is from the National Hurricane Center. He’s the guy who wrote the Hurricane Center’s FAQ. He is not a happy camper.

Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4’s Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic “Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity” along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media. These media sessions have potential to result in a widespread perception that global warming has made recent hurricane activity much more severe.

Landsea goes on to say global warming will have minimal impact (if any) on tropical systems down the road. In fact, Landsea has resigned from this board in protest of the books being cooked.

Earlier today Matt Drudge was linking to an article which quoted Dr. Trenberth with no opposing viewpoints or perspective I was upset, so I wrote the author of the story.

Hello,

I appreciate you pointing this out. Unfortunately, the article was

published before I was finished with it. It was pulled off our site (but

not before it was picked up in other places), and I have now added some

context.

http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050616_hurricane_warm.html

I apologize for this mixup.

Michael Schirber

LiveScience

How much damage has been done? Who can tell. Even bad or retracted research sometimes takes on a life of its own. I’ll wait and see what’s quoted later.

On to the second bit of reading which concerns the space program. It’s not often I see something in the National Review I agree with (in fact it’s not often I see the National Review). Today was the day.

This time it’s an article by John Derbyshire about the space program and its dubious current value. This is something I’ve written about before here in the blog. It’s not a popular thing to say the space program is a total waste… but it is.

I wrote John (whom I’d never heard of before this evening) and he wrote back.

Thank you, Geoff. Excellent comments. I just did a radio spot with Jerry

Doyle — he’s a big shuttle fan & has swallowed all the NASA guff about

microgravity manufacturing & the rest.

I think of the Shuttle program as a sort of Brasilia of the skies — pure

1950s thinking. Who else, today, is riding a vehicle designed by slide

rule?

Best,

John Derbyshire

A Brasilia analogy – wow!

Flying Through A Hurricane

Back in July 1996, I flew through the eye of Hurricane Bertha. I wrote about it then, but it’s been mostly forgotten. I thought this might be a good time to repost it here:

The most common question I’ve been asked the past two days is, “Why would you ever fly into the eye of a hurricane?” Fair question.

First of all, I have convinced myself that it isn’t dangerous. Think about it. Career government employees. Not exactly a prescription for risk takers. The plane, a 31 year old Lockheed C-130 Hercules, seems incredibly sturdy and is as stylish as a UPS truck.

Second, it sounded like a great story. Interesting, informative, maybe even a little exciting.

Any time there’s a tropical system worth investigating, the Air Force flies to a forward base and sets up shop. The idea is to have two planes with almost continuous penetrations of the eye. This week, the 53rd Weather Recon Squadron USAF (reserve) was at Homestead AFB in Florida. It’s an eerie starting point, considering wreckage from Hurricane Andrew still litters the base and surrounding town.

Flight time to Bertha would be about 2 hours and we’d be in the air for anywhere from 10 to 12 hours. That meant 69,000 pounds of fuel in the wings, under the wings, and in a 10,000 pound tank adjacent to the port-a-john in the ‘cabin’. And enough noise from the four prop engines to force everyone to wear earplugs or earphones.

Being on the ground during a major hurricane will change you. They’re not surprises like tornadoes or earthquakes, yet they cause damage that’s often more widespread and impossible to prevent. And there’s the paradox of the eye, an area where the strongest and weakest winds are amazingly close. A hurricane’s eye passing overhead is so enticing that people have been known to leave shelters only to be ‘zapped’ as the storm started up again.

Leaving Homestead, we flew directly toward the storm. Miami Center didn’t need to vector us – we weren’t going to run into much company. Not many people do this as a hobby. At 20,000 feet the ride was smooth.

A little over 100 miles out, we descended to 10,000 feet and started taking readings. Temperature, dew point, barometer, wind speed and direction. The sea surface below had enough whitecaps and spray to show the wind direction, even at altitude. Intermittently there were patches of green. The Air Force manual carried by just about everyone on board said that that was an indication of winds over 40 knots. The clouds thickened. There was rain, hitting the windshield at almost 300 mph. My photographer, J.P. Coleman, and I made our way up the stairs onto the flight deck.

My commercial flight to Florida had two in the cockpit. This flight had five, and they all seemed to be working. I started to interview the pilot, a Lt. Colonel, until he stopped for a radio call and then a checklist. The radar, mounted on the plane’s dash, about where the radar detector is on my car’s dash, started showing a somewhat circular green area. This was Bertha.

The blip moved closer to the radar’s center as we approached. I started thinking about the turbulence. How the plane would pitch and roll. How my stomach would trick me into thinking I was about to die, when I was only going to throw up. There are hand holds in the cockpit and I grabbed one, but a funny thing happened. Nothing!

All right, not quite nothing but close. We shook for ten, maybe twelve seconds before settling back to smooth flight.

As it turns out, Bertha was “Big” Bertha because of size, not strength. The eye was not round, but oval. It had more holes than Albert Hall (If you understand this, Ann B. Davis is Schultzy, if you don’t she’s Alice).

The eye was where the real work would be done. In the back, a Master Sergeant prepared a cylindrical instrument pod called a radiosonde. He watched the wind speed at altitude. From 70 to 50 to 30 knots. And then to single digits. As the wind dipped he typed “launch” on a keyboard and the radiosonde slipped out the tube. We knew from the rate of descent that its parachute had opened. It was transmitting back to the plane while falling at about 1,000 feet per minute. As soon as we got the numbers, they were satellited to the Hurricane Center and relayed to the National Weather Service data feeds. All of a sudden, anyone with a computer could get the results of Bertha’s physical.

These numbers are still the absolutely best way to fix the hurricane’s location and estimate her strength. Lower pressure, higher temperature, bigger storm. There is currently no better way to know this than by penetrating in a plane.

And that’s the way the day went. Ten and a half hours in the air with hardly a bump. We flew 100 plus mile legs in a bowtie shaped pattern, passing through the eyewall four times.

So, what did I get out of it? Well, two live phoners, from the flight deck, at 6 and 11. The airchecks are nowhere to be found, but I’m told it sounded exotic and dangerous. That’s probably because we went from the plane to the ground via single sideband shortwave radio and had to say, “over” all the time. Today (July 11) , we aired two separate packages at 6 and 11. And, I’ve gotten a little more insight into the data I use from the National Hurricane Center.

I’d do it again

Hurricane Questions

After the loss of life, and confusion, following Hurricane Charley, an interesting op-ed piece was written by Bryan Norcross, Chief Meteorologist from WFOR in Miami. You can read it here now, or click the ‘continue’ link at the end of this posting.

Norcross makes some interesting points, many of which I agree with.

Though we make our own forecasts at the TV station, we respect the Weather Service’s watches and warnings (though there are times I mention them, followed by what I think will actually happen).

The bigger problem occurs when watches and warnings are contradictory. Uncoordinated watches, warnings and statements for hurricanes, severe storms… even winter weather, is a continuing weakness of The Weather Service. All hurricane watches, warnings and statements should come from one place – period.

This certainly led to the disservice done to the people for Florida.

When local offices speak, they address problems from their own perspective, which is not necessarily the public’s. And, the public and media are probably concentrating their attention on the Storm Prediction Center (Whose idea was it to change this from the much more meaningful Hurricane Center?), which is where most people would expect to find hurricane info.

I work in Connecticut, a small state served by three NWS offices. Their statements often mislead the public because each only refers to the region for which they forecast.

Here’s an example. If Boston says a watch has been canceled for Connecticut, they mean their counties. No one in Connecticut could read a statement like that and understand that half the state is still under a watch.

During the winter, Litchfield County, our ‘snowbelt,’ might be under a lesser category of alert because the Albany office uses somewhat different criteria than the New York or Boston offices. When I post a map which shows a Winter Weather Advisory for Litchfield while there’s a Winter Storm Warning for our other counties (even though Litchfield has the more wintry forecast) it does nothing but confuse.

I have been to NWS ‘customer’ conferences in Washington, and have tried to sensitize them to this confusion. As you see – no change.

Continue reading “Hurricane Questions”

What Are They Thinking In Brazil?

The only hurricane ever seen in the South Atlantic continues to move toward the East Coast. The National Weather Service Hurricane Center, here in the states, says it is a minimal hurricane with top winds over 75 mph. That poses a threat for Brazil’s coast.

On the other hand, the Brazilian meteorological experts say, “no it’s not.”

Here’s what the AP reported late Saturday, starting with a quote from Meteorologist Dr. Gustavo Escobar of the Brazilian Center for Weather Prediction and Climatic Studies:

“Winds and rains will not be significant, so we don’t need to alarm the population,” Escobar said by telephone.

Winds in nearby Florianopolis, a city of 700,000, were only about 12 mph, rainfall was mild, and no damage was reported, said meteorologist Kelen Andrade.

Jack Beven, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said the eye of the storm was near 29 degrees south latitude and 48 degrees west longitude by Saturday evening. That would place it about 50 miles east of the city of Laguna.

“To us, it has all the satellite appearance and intensity of a hurricane,” Beven said. “I don’t know what data they’re looking at. They may have data services locally that don’t go out on the national data service.”

He said no agency is sending out regular hurricane advisories on the storm.

“Down there, this is such a rare and unique event. The whole situation is strange,” Beven said. “We’re trying to help out, but because of the uniqueness of this event, it may be out of their expertise to some degree.”

Normally, here in the states, a storm this size causes little or no damage. But, we’re building to a higher standard, especially in hurricane prone areas, than Brazil. Brazil is a country with absolutely no experience in this regard.

I’m hoping Dr. Escobar is right. I’m afraid Jack Beven knows better.

Hurricane Isabel

Unfortunately, when this website crashed and took over a week’s worth of entries, much of the back story on Hurricane Isabel disappeared too. It has been squarely in my sights for over a week now, and as I type it is about 200 miles from the North Carolina Coast.

A little hurricane background might be helpful here. Though hurricane season begins in June, the ‘real’ season doesn’t get going until the end of August and September. Take a look how long it takes to get to the third named system, and how little time it takes to get three more.

Table 1. Progress of the average Atlantic season

(1944-1996). Date upon which the following number of events

would normally have occurred.

Number Named systems Hurricanes Category 3 or greater
1 July 11 Aug 14 Sep 4
2 Aug 8 Aug 30 Sep 28
3 Aug 21 Sep 10
4 Aug 30 Sep 24
5 Sep 7 Oct 15
6 Sep 14
7 Sep 23
8 Oct 5
9 Oct 21

Throughout the season, as conditions change, the favored locations for storms changes. So, it’s no surprise that Hurricane Isabel is going to hit the coast 2/3 of the way through September, or that The Hurricane of ’38 did too. It’s climatology.

With climatology in mind, and with this system in the far Atlantic about a week ago, I started talking it up on the air. There is a fine balance you must walk with these storms. There are two possible outcomes of a busted forecast and neither are pretty.

If you say a storm is coming, and make a big deal of it, people take their time forgetting. On the other hand, if you don’t predict a storm and it comes, someone will get hurt… maybe killed.

Then, Isabel blossomed. All of a sudden, the storm was classically shaped and drawing in winds of 160 mph with gusts to 195, a true Category 5 hurricane.

People come up to me all the time and say, “You must love hurricanes (or tornadoes, or snowstorms, or anything strong weatherwise).” No! I don’t. First, I always see the potential for damage and injury. Then, I see the potential for a blown forecast. I don’t want to be wrong.

As late as last weekend, the forecast models, and climatology, said Connecticut could be a target. By early this week, it looked less likely. I started lessening the potential on the air. Still, it stayed in the back of my mind that it could be tragic to have the wrong forecast.

Now the national media started to kick in. Isabel was the big story on the cable and broadcast networks. And, some others in Connecticut continued to hang with the ‘what if’ scenario. My forecast became more confident, but not without qualms. I began to reinforce my belief that it would be windy and rainy… dreadful… but not a hurricane.

It was something we could handle with little inconvenience. There might be power outages and minor coastal flooding and little else.

Now, we wait. Within the next 24 hours I’ll know how I did. There’s no doubt, the satellite images show Isabel a shadow of her former self. The Hurricane Center is officially saying 105 mph, but their technical discussions say they think it’s less.

I’m sure at some point someone will accuse me of hyping the storm, though I’ve done everything possible to keep it in perspective. That comes with the territory.

Last thing before I go. In the past, I have been critical of The National Hurricane Center. Not so with this storm. As far as I can tell, I give them an “A” on forecast track and a “B” on intensity forecast.