| I was going back over the model history and GFDL seems to have shown nothing but "worst case" for this entire storm. It's first run was Yucatan Channel into the GOM. After one point towards N.O., it went to Tampa for several runs before that long fixation on Miami. Then came a brief Gold Coast before straight to Charleston. It has known nothing but Chesapeake Bay and NYC since. It's been a technical disaster and has looked like a trailer for a disaster flick. Savannah should be offended. Pixar buy these guys? For that matter the NHC official forecast has included landfall literally everywhere from Miami to the Maine coast. I don't think there is a single stretch of 100 miles on the entire east coast that it has not touched in the 5 day track, much less the cone. Of course, there is intensity. The track across the big islands made a handy excuse for falling short, but it seems inexcusable and hype-serving that the lack of full-quadrant outflow and SW shear has been ignored for days amidst talk of Cat 5 potential. All of this for a storm that has actually made only TWO real turns: One east of the islands in the Atlantic and one more over Marsh Harbor in the Northern Bahamas. This with NO dramatic shear, no popup highs, and no surprise troughs. It's probably had the benefit of more intensive aircraft investigation than we have seen outside of GOM storms. It has not been a shining moment for NHC and tropical storm science. If it should follow XTRAP from this point and wreak havoc on the mid-atlantic and NE, it's still not going to be the poster child for modeling and forecasting...Not to mention the level of confidence for the next one. Is there a postmortem on these things written within NHC? I guess it will get lost in how brilliant the 24 hour forecast turns out to be from the Outer Banks in predicting the heavy rains for the Mid-Atlantic states. The reputation of NHC rests on one more bypassed trough and storm surge in New Jersey, I guess. There are a lot of resources that could have been saved until tonight if that's all they have. My apologies for the sarcasm, but it has been terrible to watch this mess. Except for the genuine recon information from Chris, there has been little to brag about in our discussions, model runs, or NHC forecasts. All of the real trackers and forecasters here quit when it wasn't SE Florida? I guess they are just smarter than me and know better than to interject an opinion in the midst of fear and concern. It could make one miss the good-old-days of wishcasters from La. or Wilmington. GFDL and NHC have pretty much done that for about half of North America. |