Centerfield

Looks to me like we should be wrapping the 2005 hurricane deficit by the year 2012.

Remember back in the old days, when it was good manners to fess up to what you have done.

Now it is a simple game of Texas hold'em either you fold, raise, or go all in.
If you know me, I hate to point fingers...lol But, it appeared to me that during the broadcast on the news during the hurricane neither the govenor nor the mayor were standing on top of thier chairs screaming to residents "GET OUT, NOW!"
It is awful, what happened to New Orleans, but should we really spread the responsibilty of the check. I live in San Antonio, and we have given out charity as if it was simple a "Hello"
I personally think it is the city's responsibilty for the levi system. Not the rest of the U.S.
We have our own daily tragedies. Unemployment, School overcrowding and Welfare, now add the millions of refugees from Louisiana and surrounding states hit by Katrina and Rita.
Any questions?

Who is going to actually take charge? Will it be our president? Congress? State Representatives? Who will fold? Who will raise? & Who will go all in?

ping

Mathematically speaking, I find these "predictions" singularly unimpressive. We know from historical data that we can expect the number of named hurricanes to fall in a fairly narrow range, IIRC usually from the mid-high single digits to the mid-high teens, occasionally creeping higher.

How good could I have done from say 1975-200 with, oh say, 11 +/-5? Now suppose I bumped it up 4 when patterns seemed to show a shift towards a period of higher activity, maybe to 15 +/-5? Gee, I must be a genius! I bet if I came upo with some method involving the reading of chicken entrails, I could probably hone it even more. :-)

I just don't get giving credence to a single season's long-range forecast. What exactly is the point there? Shouldn't the larger point much more simply be that if you live in a region that gets hurricanes, you need to be ready for each and every season?

Consider this...suppose some expert predicted the number exactly correct for 20 years straight, and then in the 21st year predicted only one named hurricane, so you figured the odds were really low that year and you didn't bother to be as prepared as usual. Then suppose we only did get a single named hurricane, but it was category 5 and hit your town. How consoled would you be that your decision to not be as ready as usual was rationally defensible based on probability?

For general public consumption, we should not pay much mind to year to year variation or taht season's long-range prediction. If you live in an area that's potentially threatened, you should be educated and ready.

The main reason I put this post together was that the MSM took this year's prediction and trumpet "less hurricanes predicted next year".

So I collected this data set to see if the predictions had any meaning.

I was going to include an updated graph of the tropical storm data set I emailed you, but couldn't get it to display.

I think I'll predict 23 storms for 2006.

The main reason I put this post together was that the MSM took this year's prediction and trumpet "less hurricanes predicted next year".

Whoever does that, that's just effing brutal. It's like they want us to not understand. This is another example of the MSM bias for, well, idiocy.

I thnik it's at least somewhat meaningful to emphasize that experts are generally predicting a continuation of the current pattern of more storms than usual in south atlantic/caribbean/gulf region over the near and intermediate term. And it's probably worth noting that there isn't a broad consensus on what to attribute the rise to, while mentioning the top hypotheses. But beyond that, heh!

BTW Bob, one thing I heard mentioned somewhere is that while we're experienceing an uptick here on the east coast, worldwide figures on such storms don't currently show the same trend, that the uptick here is corresponding with a decrease elsewhere, so that the gloabl figures are showing either a slight uptick or even relative stability. But I don't know if that's true. Anyone know?

There was an article published in one of the major journals about that (I think it was in Science). It seemed to show that in the pacific the number of storms are not increasing, but that they are getting stronger. While in the North Atlantic they are getting more numerous and stronger.

It kind of makes sense. There has to be an upper limit on the number of storms. At a certain point the presence of one storm would prevent another from forming. After they reach that point, if energy is still added to the system then their intensity would increase.

Erika, the mayor did order an evacuation of the city on the 28th.
Gov. Blanco ordered highways to flow outta there, one direction only.

assorted facts
Only three Category 5 hurricanes the highest on the Saffir-Simpson scale have hit the United States since record-keeping began. The last was 1992's Hurricane Andrew, which leveled parts of South Florida, killed 43 people and caused $31 billion in damage. The others were the 1935 Labor Day hurricane that hit the Florida Keys and killed 600 people and Hurricane Camille, which devastated the Mississippi coast in 1969, killing 256.

THe evacuation of NO was the largest ever in US history at the time. Before that was the evacuation of Pinellas county in TX a year ago in advance of Hurricane Charley.

At the risk of hell freezing over, I'm going to agree with Marcus twice in one week. The evacuation of New Orleans before the storm went much more smoothly than, for example, the attempted evacuation of Houston before Hurricane Rita. Far more people left New Orleans than had ever evacuated for a hurricane before.

Were things done perfectly? Of course not, and lessons should be taken from the failures. But lessons learned and justifiable finger-pointing are different things. The governor and the mayor should have both been more forceful in urging people to leave. Those who actually watched them on TV said there was no real emotion of urgency conveyed, no "we really, really mean it this time." And most serious opinions I've read suggest that the mandatory evacuation order should have been given about 24 hours earlier.

Many of the people who stayed behind chose to stay behind. It wasn't just individuals with no transportation.

Now, if you want to talk about major and inexcusable screw-ups AFTER the storm, the governor and the mayor and FEMA all get massive doses of blame.