2024 Tropical Weather Thread

buzd said

The guy on Fox 8 did the same, and also everything @bclemms said.

Also having watched these storms for years, it was pretty clear it was going to move east. The models have improved a lot over the years and I don’t think AI has much to add here since it’s just going to aggregate data that already exists.

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Payton Malone on WWL TV also spent a lot of time talking about how the NHC track had the center a good bit west of NOLA, but that there was a model showing a direct hit and since it was on the Eastern edge of the cone it still could happen. He didn't come right out and say it would happen, but he warned that there was a possibility.

But most of the day yesterday WWL just kept talking about the NHC track which you could clearly see was wrong because the storm kept moving east and got to the edge of the cone, still headed East around 2:00 p.m. It was clear to me as an amateur looking at the radar that it was going East and running through the NHC cone, but when WWL had the NHC guy on he talked about the NHC track and then just mentioned maybe it could go a little bit more East than the track shows. When asked about it he just said, everyone in SELA should just know to expect impacts from the storm.

The models give you a general idea, but they really don't know what these things are going to do once they interact with land or get close to the coast. A little jog or stall in motion can change everything. Although this march East done by Francine was pretty dramatically different than what the NHC had been saying to expect.

The other problem is that there really wasn't anything anyone could do about it by the time some of the models shifted. There wasn't time to evacuate people so you just had to stay put and hope for the best. The only other option is for all of SELA to shutdown and evacuate any time a storm gets in the Gulf and that just isn't practical on many levels. If for no other reason, you can't evacuate if your place of employment wants you to be at work.

But it's not like they aren't trying or putting resources into this. Weather is just highly unpredictable and subject to so many variables.