Sorry for the lack of updates here. I’ve been tracking Irene over at Weather Nerd for Pajamas Media (hey, they pay me!), and on Twitter… while also still, y’know, having a job and a family 🙂 … so I just haven’t had very much time to post here as well.
But anyway, as I’m sure you all know by now, Hurricane Irene has weakened and is expected to hit the northeast as a minimal Category 1 or strong tropical storm, far weaker than feared. Even so, this remains a serious situation, with lots of real risks — primarily storm surge and inland flooding (not so much wind) — and folks need to be prepared for the worst. That means you, New Jersey beachgoers:
P.S. By the way, a bit of navel-gazing… in a sort of pale, Twitter-age echo of my blog’s rise to prominence during Katrina, I’ve seen my Twitter follower count absolutely soar in the last three days, from 1,598 on Wednesday to 2,102 now.
What’s bad is that the hype over this means next time no one’s going to pay attention. And I’m pretty sure next time’s coming sooner than 50+ years.
Be careful to differentiate “hype” from “reasonable forecast possibilities that simply didn’t happen.” As I wrote on Weather Nerd yesterday, those are very different concepts. Certainly, the media engages in sensationalism and hype. (Also, the sun rises and Joe Biden makes gaffes.) But the fact that we thought this was going to be a stronger storm….that’s not hype. Nor is it even poor forecasting, within the bounds of available technology and known scientific knowledge. It’s just an example of how difficult hurricane intensity forecasting is, and a reminder that worst-case scenarios require everything going wrong, whereas non-worst-case just means one of several possible things went right. Worst-case scenarios usually won’t happen, even when they were a realistic possibility at the point where it was necessary to start preparing. That’s just the reality of meteorological uncertainty, and if people’s inability to process counterfactuals makes it so they’re going to grow complacent every time there’s a “false alarm,” well, we’re DOOMED, because the majority “alarms” are always going to be at least partially “false,” and that’s nobody’s fault, it’s just probability at work.
“…if,,,they’re going to grow complacent every time there’s a ‘false alarm,’ well, we’re DOOMED…”
Yes but what’s your Point? :>
“…within the bounds of available technology and known scientific knowledge.”
In the Rumsfeldian School of meteorology that would be, as distinct from (a) Unknown scientific knowledge, (b) known scientific Ignorance, and (c) unknowing unscientific knownothingness. 🙂
Oh, I think that _you_ and most readers of this blog can appreciate the difference between “Yeah, NYC made its saving throw against hurricane and is now rolling for damage with d6s versus d10s…”. However, for the single mother of 4 who just missed two days of work unpaid, sat in traffic for 5 hours, and doesn’t follow weather I gotta think that she’s going to be a lot more hesitant. It’s like several weather forecasters have said about tornado sirens / warnings and their relationship to the death tolls in Alabama / Joplin: Whether they mean to or not, people get jaded…and then the real thing hits.
I agree with Brendan, the forecast and coverage has been pretty well done overall. In fact, although Irene weakened favorably before coming ashore in North Carolina, the rest of the predictions have been astoundingly precise. Case in point: the predicted track from North Carolina to over New York-Long Island has hardly budged the past 72 hours, which is pretty phenomenal considering the challenge of accurately modeling a hurricane heading north into the westerlies and interacting with wind sheer and passing troughs.
The bottom line is, we may yet see a more devastating hurricane impact the Eastern seaboard someday, but we will probably never see another Irene-type storm lash pretty much the entire mid-Atlantic coastline as thoroughly as we are presently experiencing. The track she took is about as worst-case as it gets for the East Coast.
By the way, I *get* that you’ve been busy posting over at PJM, but what about the regular cross-post or at least link each time you put up a new post?
Also, I’m curious, given that you last blogged at PJM in 2008, how did this re-engagement come about? Did they ask you to come back and blog this threat, or did you initiate the contact?
AMLT – I suspect that Brendan threatened to blog about it, and they decided they would be better to have him doing it there ! (grin) (Our B seems to be smarter than he looks, after all !)
Brendan, The coverage here has not been reasonable. Considering the Central minimum pressure…..The sterring currents of this storm and te water temps and land it had to cross…..Could any reasonable person suggest it would reach NY as a Cat 3 storm….Of course not. This storm is behaving exactly as a reasonable person would have expected. As a veteran of the Rita and Ike, I can tell you that the disgraceful scare tactics of the media concerning this storm will in time get people killed. The did in the western gulf and they will on the east coast. Someday a truely powerful storm will come along and people will ignore it. Just like people ignored Ike cause they had been burned three years before that by the scare tactics of the media during the Rita debacle.
Telling people that the windows will be sucked out of every High Rise in Manhattan because it happened in Houston……to one building in a storm much more intense that this…..and yes…I saw this on HLN.
Nobody should ever pay attentin ot TV weatherman during a storm…..The lie….they just flat out lie….If you want the real story go to the NHC websight and interper the data on your own.
I don’t really understand the backlash on the warnings/coverage for Irene. It seems entirely reasonable and justified, especially since it all unfolded so accurately. It was right to evacuate parts of NYC and warn people, even if it wasn’t a Cat 3 disaster. People are still without power, there’s flooding, and it would have been unsafe and stupid to stay put.
The media filled airtime with speculation, but it also did a good job of airing warnings from Christie and Bloomberg repeatedly, and explaining that this would have a real impact on your daily life. People paid attention and took the necessary precautions.
After Katrina, we should be happy with this response and thankful it wasn’t worse.
Given the recent silence on this blog, I hope that Venerable Loy has not become Submersible Loy …