Re: Coming soon: Cool new stuff coming from the National Hurricane Center
Posted by
Chris in Tampa on 3/27/2013, 7:30 pm
I was wondering how the 5 day outlook would work. I figured the two day would stick around and hope it does. A five day outlook is going to be wrong a lot, but I like the idea of them trying it, though more from a weather geeks perspective.
I really wonder how the watches and warnings for an undeveloped system would work. They have talked about it before, with Humberto being an example, but they would have to develop something new to deal with it since there would be no storm number associated with the undeveloped system. (1-50) There would be an invest number (90-99), but I have a feeling they would probably not use that but instead reference its coordinates in some sort of new product and/or perhaps even adding it to the outlook.
For six and seven day forecasts, I'm glad they continue to test that. (I'm not sure when they will have 5 years of error data to create the cone.) It seems they have been doing that for quite awhile though already. I have mixed emotions about it. I really think it could be helpful, but I am concerned about how large of a cone it would be. I would like to see it to be honest, but the problem I have with it is if everyone shows that 7 day cone on every newscast. Can you imagine how large the cone is going to be? Could it be 1,000 miles in diameter at 7 days? Perhaps more? I would like to see what the NHC thinks about a position 6 or 7 days out, but I would not want that to be the cone that is always shown on newscasts. I worry people might be in the cone so much at that distance that they start to doubt the cone. It might be a bit of a joke in a way, imagine how many inland areas, states well away from the coast, could be in a cone in a 6 or seven day forecast. I just hope they show the 5 day cone primarily and leave the 6 or 7 day cone to be something that is much less often shown on the news, primarily shown when it is more relevant for a situation and discussed thoroughly. There could be advantages to a cone that far out however. The Antilles I think would probably benefit the most from it, so I guess the media will just have to be responsible at when they do display a 6 or 7 day cone. Perhaps in a few years the NHC will have the amount of error at those forecast positions reduced.
As for storm surge warnings, that remains complex. I like some of the products the NHC has already been providing to the public on surge. I just wonder what a separate watch and warning would look like. I have thought a lot about that, but it is very complex. Storm surge can be so different depending on so many factors. Wind is so much more straightforward to forecast with a watch or warning over a large area. For surge, it will always need to be much more in depth based on the specific localized area you are talking about. When it comes to surge, people need to inform themselves much more and be aware that localized surge could be higher or lower. There will always be more education required on the part of residents along the coast for surge than wind. It can't ever be as simple as an easy wind scale. Surge is too complex for that.
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On a different note, Cypress you had posted about the experimental gridded marine forecasts moving here:
http://preview.weather.gov/graphical
I guess it still has not been fully moved over yet. They say here that a new domain will be added called "Oceanic" which is shown here:
http://graphical.weather.gov/docs/ndfdSRS.htm
I was concerned we would lose a lot of the features of the experimental gridded marine forecasts but perhaps not, they just have not been added yet.
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