Science prevails

I'm something of a NOAA National Hurricane Center addict now that I live in hurricane country.  I mean, if you crave hurricane danger, it's hardly like living in Florida or even closer to the coast.  But I grew up in Montana, where hurricanes are strictly confined to television.

I like to read the forecast discussions in particular when a storm is developing.  Not that I follow a lot of the meteorological reasoning, but you can get some details about the storm's progress outside of just the forecasts and warnings.  One paragraph today struck me, in discussion about Tropical Storm Florence, which has failed to organize and develop the way that many of the models have predicted.  Yet the forecaster is still confident (emphasis mine):

NOTE: LAST TWO VISIBLE SATELLITE IMAGES PRIOR TO SENDING THIS
ADVISORY SUGGESTS THAT THE CLOUD PATTERN IS A LITTLE BETTER
ORGANIZED AND THE CENTER APPEARS TO BE TUCKED INTO THE CONVECTION.
IF THIS TREND TOWARD ORGANIZATION CONTINUES...SCIENCE WILL HAVE PREVAILED.

This is signed at the end by Forecaster Avila, whose brief wikipedia page highlights his other forecasting greatest hits.  I guess I'm just always surprised when there's any levity in these discussions.  The all-caps type (and often, the warnings of impending weather catastrophe) are otherwise so serious...

Posted at 02:19PM Sep 08, 2006 by WILSON, JOSHUA in General  |