Meteorologist Mike Smith, over at Meteorological Musings has a great story to relay. While the source of the quote is from Churchhill, it makes me think of Apollo 13 and Gene Krantz. Mike writes of the effort put into forecasting hurricane Sandy:
But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss…
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.— Sir Winston Churchill, June 18, 1940
I’ve thought of that famous quote from Sir Winston several times since Saturday — when it became completely clear that Hurricane Sandy was going to be the multi-state disaster that had threatened for the previous two days.
While victims and officials are still early in the process of sorting out this huge disaster, it is clear that unprecedented and extremely difficult-to-forecast Hurricane Sandy was meteorology’s “finest hour.”
How good were these forecasts?
Read his full story at: “This Was Their Finest Hour”
Well, Churchill’s “finest hour” was also about Hurricanes; Hawker Hurricanes to be specific. Although Spitfires got all the glory, it was the Hurricanes which bore the brunt of the storm.
But I’m a Spitfire junky anyway, so who cares about the Hurricanes ?
I love the weather forecasters. The forecasters were spot on. I checked them a lot. Lifesaving stuff. I trust meteorological forecasts. Great job Weather folks.
I question whether the wind measurements were accurate. Local Pennsylvania station WNEP-16, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, reported they weren’t getting reliable wind speed measurements from their “weathernet”, primarily weather stations at schools etc, because the instruments broke.
They showed the TV station’s weather station. I recognized the model instantly, it’s the one on the WeatherShop’s “Monitor your own climate” right-toolbar listing, viewed from practically the same angle.
It too suffered damage. The weather vane (wind direction indicator) under the nose? GONE, location unknown. Next day or so, they said they ordered the replacement.
Replacement weather vane, or replacement station? I thought it was the part, now I’m not certain. Can just the vane be replaced?
In any case, with that much widespread instrument damage, how can they know the readings are accurate? They didn’t just all go dead, some were limping along reporting lower than they should have. How do they sort out which ones were correct and when the ones that weren’t went bad?
The part I never see any serious discussion of is the overall predictive accuracy of any of the models….or meteorologists. Taking a single point forecast…ie Sandy…and taking credit for it would be a valid point if the art of weather forecasting were actually shown to be better than guessing. So, for example, what is the actual forecast accuracy of the much credited european model? How about the maligned american models…how about the accuracy of the individual forecasters? The basic problem I see is that weather forecasting, whatever the source, consists of huge amounts of largely useless forecasting data. I admit to watching winter storm forecasts with almost religous fervor, but also realize that my cat probably has as good a chance of predicting a snow storm more than 3 or 4 days out than the pretty graphics on my PC screen. If weather forecasts were accompanied by the underlying demonstrated past accuracy, I expect they would be largely ignored beyond a few days. Now, if you can see some monster weather system to your west (in the US), then you can probably be confident that it is not likely to be dry and sunny a few days hence….so, here’s the challenge to the “we got Sandy” right crowd : Have you demonstrated superior accuracy consistently in the past (with accompanied error prediction).? I see a lot of very intelligent, rational, and accomplished folks post here. Bottom line: What’s the actual state of the art of weather forecasting accuracy?
The problem is that say right now, my rain water tank is empty. For the first time since 2009 when it was a government sponsored water conservation ploy, as I have town water in abundance. But I noticed over the years, when it was raining hard down in the valley just 1 1/2 kms from where I live it didn’t rain where I lived. So predictions are not always complete. Might be OK for one area in the locality but not accurate in another. But with satellite imagery now, it can give some more accuracy than the wall barometer.