Misleading / fake information on social media
Posted by
Chris in Tampa on 9/1/2017, 3:18 pm
I've never seen so much misleading/fake information on social media regarding a storm. Maybe I haven't noticed it before.
Although maybe it is actually more this time, as the NWS, NHC and other meteorologists have had to talk about it.
I've even seen some meteorologists post some things that were inappropriate. One thing was simply false and a meteorologist didn't take it down. Over five thousand re-tweets. As someone noted in a reply to that, the reply he posted kind of saying it might not be accurate got less than 100 re-tweets. You don't leave up invalid information just because it got a lot of re-tweets. Most people will not notice a reply, as was the case here, because very quickly after he posted it he posted the sorta correction and the original tweet was still re-tweeted over five thousand times since then. You can't edit something on Twitter to say you were wrong in the original tweet.
But there has been purposefully fake information posted on social media. People have posted tracks made to look like the NHC's track and they have been widely shared. One in particular I think is what prompted the NWS to post something.
If this hits a populated area hard, no one gets credit for hyping a model solution weeks in advance or even making their own guess at a track. GFS in the long range has been from Bermuda and Canada to the Gulf, and most everything in-between, at least once, including re-curving without hitting any land. One of those things will happen, but the GFS doesn't get credit in the long range for one solution after presenting nearly every possible solution in prior runs. GFS in the long range will remain unreliable next time. Obviously anything is possible and nothing can be ruled out that the GFS shows in the long range, but you don't need a model to tell you anything is possible. Wait until multiple models in a more reasonable range over multiple runs show something. We still don't even have a good idea about whether this storm will impact any of the Antilles.
Obviously we discuss model runs here, that's what we do here. We're weather nerds. But I just want to make sure people know the uncertainty in extended range forecasts from the models. The NHC does a 5 day forecast for a reason. As you get further out, things get a lot more uncertain.
The NHC is where you get official information on tropical cyclones in the Atlantic basin:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
On a side note, I hope they never go to a public 7 day forecast. I think the error inherent with it would be too great too often to be worthwhile. |
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Misleading / fake information on social media - Chris in Tampa, 9/1/2017, 3:18 pm Post A Reply
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