#hurricane forecasts

Part of Trump's plan to fire competent specialists in the federal government and replace them with MAGA hacks includes NOAA - the agency which forecasts hurricanes and monitors climate change.

If NOAA isn't around to report temperatures and compile data on tropical weather, then climate change doesn't exist – at least in the feeble minds of MAGA zombies. And with climate change not a factor in US decision making, then fossil fuel companies which lavishly fund the Trump campaign can "drill drill drill" unhindered and do irreparable damage to the planet.

Remember when Trump tried to change the forecast for Hurricane Dorian with a Sharpie marker? Imagine what storm predictions would be like if MAGA political quacks were completely running weather predictions.

Bill McKibben is an outspoken critic of climate wreckers. In the video above he has praise for Joe Biden's willingness to stand up to dirty energy. He contrasts Biden with convicted felon Donald Trump who would turn the planet over to fossil fuel oligarchs for a $1 billion campaign contribution so they can complete their destruction of Planet Earth. McKibben says that the difference between Biden and Trump on climate change "could not be clearer".

Monica Medina, President and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society who served in the Obama and Clinton administrations, said in the same video that Trump will "weaponize weather against his political enemies" in a second term.

Here's a peek at what hurricane forecasts would look like in a Trump second term...

Meteorologist and journalist Bob Henson‬: "Long-range ensemble forecasts are a double-edged sword.

"During four months of reporting, we found that the responses of local officials across western North Carolina’s mountain counties differed a great deal.

By Bryan Norcross, Washington Post, June 1, 2018

Hurricane forecasters and research scientists are justifiably proud of the decreasing errors in storm forecasts. On average, the forecasts produced by the National Hurricane Center predicting where the center of a storm is going to be one to five days in the future are getting better with time.

Massive increases in the capacity of modern computers--the number of calculations they can do every second--are largely responsible for the improved forecasts.

While the decreasing average errors in hurricane forecasts are a good news story, I contend that we’re looking at the wrong metric. The real question is: How often does the forecast go drastically wrong?

The scariest hurricane scenario is not Irma or Maria. We knew those storms were going to be bad well before they hit. There was plenty of time to prepare. The real scariest scenario is a mega-storm threat that rapidly develops in the day or two before it slams the coast.

Very few people could gin up hyper concern--and therefore go through the slog of hurricane preps--with a tropical storm a few days offshore. And complex coastal areas cannot properly prepare for a devastating storm if the process starts a day or two before landfall.

What would happen if a Category 4 or 5 storm hit while coastal residents were in the process of evacuating? It’s an unnerving thing to consider, but the scenario is far from unimaginable.

In 1992, four days before Category 5 Hurricane Andrew crashed into the Miami suburbs, the disturbance had dissipated. Hurricane hunters could not find a circulation. Three days before it hit, Andrew was a 50-mph tropical storm. Two days out it became a 75-mph hurricane. No one imagined it would hit as a Category 5 the next night.

Modern science and technology would not save us if Hurricane Andrew happened again. Forecasts would hopefully be a bit better, and we might have hints that the storm might rapidly intensify, but a strengthening Category 5 at landfall would still be a surprise.

A more frightening Category 5 scenario played out in the middle Florida Keys in 1935. Two days before the strongest hurricane in the U.S. record book hit land, it was a 60-mph tropical storm. One day out it was hurricane with 105 to 115 mph winds. Nobody thinks that an evacuation could be completed in a repetition of this scenario. A monstrous surge of water plowed across the Middle Keys from the Atlantic to the south and Florida Bay to the north. Sustained winds are estimated to have reached 185 mph.

The point is, two of the three most intense hurricanes known to have made landfall in the United States fit the category of “difficult to forecast.” Forecasts for replays of Andrew or the 1935 storm would likely be prone to forecast errors greater, perhaps significantly greater, than the average errors we are so pleased are decreasing.

Imagine a 1935 or 1992 scenario where the fast-developing, super-intense hurricane wanders outside the cone and slams a community that thought it was out of the danger zone just a day or two earlier. Outlier scenarios are what we need to worry about.

In 2017, Hurricane Harvey was another kind of outlier. When it reorganized in the Gulf of Mexico, it was forecast to come ashore as a strong tropical storm, just over 48 hours before it hit as a Category 4 hurricane. No computer model initially forecast the spectacular strengthening, and, therefore, neither did the NHC forecast. Thankfully, the storm hit a lightly populated part of the Texas coast, so people had time to prepare when the forecast properly called for a strong storm about a day-and-a-half before landfall.

By Jean Friedman-Rudovsky, NY Times, July 29, 2013

HAVANA--Old computer processors whirred and paint crumbled from the walls in the National Prognostic Center of Cuba's Meteorological Institute, set on a rise above Havana's old city. Half a dozen meteorologists shifted their gaze between satellite images on large video screens and a giant overhead map of the United States.

They monitor the region's weather every day, but their gaze grows especially intense in hurricane season. As the center's director, José Rubiera, explained, almost every hurricane that strikes the Southern United States passes through Cuba first. "A hurricane that hits Cuba doesn't ask for a visa before entering the United States," he said.

This shared destiny has led to a rare truce between the two nations, which have had no bilateral relations for more than 50 years. Their meteorological agencies exchange satellite data, jointly analyze radar and collaborate on storm forecasting.

When a storm is approaching, "we call the National Prognostic Center or they call us, whoever gets to the phone first," said Lixion Avila, a senior specialist at the United States government's National Hurricane Center.

Dr. Avila called Cuba one of the United States' most valuable meteorological partners. "Cuba has a long history of excellent forecasting with a tremendous record of data," he said.

Or as Michael T. Clegg, foreign secretary of the National Academy of Sciences, put it, "It seems that the substantial threat to the human population" posed by storms "is taken seriously enough to make cooperation more desirable."

And some experts on both sides wish that cooperation would extend to the nonmeteorological aspects of storms. The countries' disaster management agencies have no direct communication.

"Cuba manages hurricanes well," said Russel L. Honoré, the retired lieutenant general who commanded military relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005. He has since become a specialist on disaster preparedness and has traveled to Cuba three times in recent years. "We could be learning from them," he added.

Cuba consistently weathers Category 4 and 5 hurricanes with relatively few casualties. The Center for International Policy, a research and advocacy group based in Washington, says a person is 15 times as likely to be killed by a hurricane in the United States as in Cuba. The island did suffer a body blow last fall from Hurricane Sandy, the second-biggest storm in Cuban history. Before it struck the United States' Eastern Seaboard, Sandy slammed into Santiago de Cuba, the island's second-largest city. Eleven people died, and President Raúl Castro said that Santiago looked "like a bombed city."

Half of its buildings were damaged; almost 16,000 in the city and the surrounding province were destroyed. There were small outbreaks of cholera and dengue fever. Some residents interviewed for this article said they went almost a month without electricity.

"Cuba has an enormous amount of deteriorated buildings that can't withstand natural disasters," said Ricardo Mena, a United Nations official responsible for disaster risk reduction in the Americas. He added that while a hospital, for example, might need rebuilding, "that's very costly and they don't have the resources to do it."

Still, he and other analysts emphasized that Cuba would have suffered a great deal more if not for its well-rehearsed storm preparation system.

It is a multilevel process that starts with the young. Grade school students practice evacuations; high-school students monitor neighborhoods to identify weak trees and other hazards.

Dr. Rubiera is the nation's sole hurricane forecaster, much praised by Cubans for his calm, authoritative manner. "We trust Rubiera because he knows what he's talking about," said Camilo Guara, a Havana resident.

In the event of a storm, the head of every institution--schools, hospitals, hotels--is considered a member of the Cuban Civil Defense force, responsible for the well-being of people around them. Tight state control means Cuba can mandate evacuations, mobilize quickly and put Dr. Rubiera's face on every TV screen. "Cuba is not a model that could be fully replicated anywhere else," Mr. Mena said.

In Pinar del Río, the province most vulnerable, the government deploys large brigades to prepare for disaster.

"If you have nowhere to go, then there's the state shelters with food and water and doctors," said María Fajardo, a resident.

Still, evacuees are more likely to take shelter with family members, friends or strangers, according to the relief organization Oxfam. "We have learned to take care of ourselves and not just rely on the state," said Yesi Mejía, 43, of Havana.