FSU single game field goal record to be broken against the Hurricanes?

There’s no series in college football better known for a team misseing field goals than Florida State against Miami. For that reason, it’s highly entertaining that with 13 minutes remaining in the 4th quarter, FSU’s Gary Cismesia has kicked a record tying five field goals. This is the second time that Cismesia has tied the record. Sebastien Janikowski accomplished the feat twice as well and it was Bill Capece who set the record in 1980.

AT BATTLE’S END SHE (OR XAVIER LEE)  WASN’T SO GREAT

On their subsequent three posessions Florida State failed to get into field goal position and after that Miami scored a touchdown to take the lead by a point with just over a minute to go. A potentially dramatic finish was utterly ruined when Xavier Lee dawdled in the pocket too longwas stripped of the ball, which was subsequently carried to the end zone to put Miami up by seven. Lee’s meltdown continued when after scrambling for a few yards on the next posession, he threw three consecutive incomplete passes, all of which were short pass attempts that skipped off the ground in front of the receiver. Miami then ran the clock out. Thus ended what it was almost certainly the last FSU game I’ll be able to watch in its entirety this season (and quite possibly the last FSU game I’ll  be able to see at all.   However, considering who FSU has to face in November that might not be entirely a bad thing).

Comparing Dean to Ivan

UPDATE at 4:30 PM: Based on the satellite imagery, it looks like Dean’s CPA to Kingston is going to come out very nearly identical to that of Ivan’s, about 40-45 nautical miles, which keeps Kingston out of the strongest winds.

The one stretch of Jamaica still in danger of getting the very worst wind-wise is the stretch that sticks out: the southern coast from Portland Point to Treasure Beach (Jamaica map). That will depend on which way the next couple of unpredictable wobbles go.

The other benefit of Dean’s faster motion that I neglected to point out is that it reduces the cumulative wind effects (i.e. the total amount of time the area is exposed to hurricane force winds). That serves to enhance building survivability.

—————————————————————————————————————————-

Looking at the forecast and the satellite loop, it looks like Dean’s closest point of approach to Kingston is going to be comparable to that of Ivan back in 2004. It may come slightly closer to the southwestern-most point of Jamaica, however.

The wind speed is comparable to what it Ivan’s was when it passed by Jamaica, however, the radius of hurricane force winds is a little bit larger (60 miles vice 45 miles).

A significant plus relative to Ivan is that Dean is moving much quicker (18 mph vice 8). Because rainfall accumulation is inversely related to forward speed (i.e. slower storm = more rain), Dean shouldn’t put nearly as much rain on Jamaica as did Ivan (25+ inches in many places).

Not to say that there won’t be widespread damage, but owing to the distance that it appears to be to keeping from land and its forward speed, Dean will give Jamaica a fairly significant break from the worst case scenario.

 

Re: Is Dean becoming annular?

(I tried posting this as a comment to Brendan’s post, but it got flagged as spam, so I’ll repeat it here and throw in a couple of references for the meteorologically inclined)

One of the things to come out of the recent research into annual hurricanes is an Annular Hurricane Index, which screens storms for the possibility of being annular and then rates how annular they are.  It’s being operationally tested this year.

And yes, yesterday evening, it did pass all of the screening steps and was marginally annualar, according to the index.

One thing that I didn’t realize when I wrote the Katrina post is that (based on observation), there is a max SST for a hurricane to be annular. The screening step for the index fails a storm if it’s over 29.1 C. Dean will be over waters warmer than that today.

References:

Operational Implementation of an Objective Annular Hurricane Index (Powerpoint presentation)

 Annular Hurricanes (PDF)

What are Annular Hurricanes? (PDF)

Back in the saddle

Anyone who has been reading my blog recently and is familiar with some of my past blogging, perhaps regarding Ivan
or Katrina is probably thinking “WTF is going on? Since when did Eye of the Storm become the research and analysis arm for brendanloy.com? Where’s the Dean posts? It’s like Charles is actually getting more than 4 hours sleep per day while there’s a major hurricane out there!”

Well folks, yours truly, who served four years in the active duty and another four plus drilling in the Reserves, got word a couple of months ago that he was going to be recalled to active duty. That became effective today.  The journey is rebegun; this time it will feature a stay in Iraq. I won’t be going underway, but there won’t be any liberty calls either.

Assessing the annual possibility of a Katrina.

Inspired by Brendan Loy’s Was Katrina a 1-in-400 years storm for N.O.?

Why I’m examining this

The US Army Corps of Engineers asserts that Katrina was 1 in 400 year storm, (see Facts and Reliability Fact sheet, for example). Brendan wonders how they came up with that.

What the USCE means when it says “400 year storm”

The calculation to make classify an event as a 100 year, 200 year … event is straight-forward. It is simply 100 divided by the annual probability of the event occurring. Thus, the USCE is asserting that the annual probability of a Katrina repeat is 0.25%

I’ll look at this in two different ways. One using published numbers and another ‘home-brewed’.

Using published numbers

The published numbers come from the United States Hurricane Landfalling Hurricane Probability Project, which comes from Colorado State’s William Gray and Phillip Klotzbach (of seasonal forecasting fame). The project calculates the probabilities of tropical storm/hurricane/intense hurricane landfall for the east coast of the United States (methodology). It’s done by dividing the east coast into 11 regions (based on intense hurricane frequency) and calculating the probabilities for each region. Using that, calculations are made for subregions and counties on the assumption that storms have an equal chance of hitting any particular spot in that region. (For example let’s say that a region has a 10% chance of a hurricane in a given year. If a subregion takes up half of the region, then it’s probability of a hurricane would be 5%).

So, if we look at the map, we find that the Katrina made landfall in region 3 (which extends from mid-Louisiana to the western Florida panhandle), sub-region 3c (eastern-most Louisiana). According to the methodology the data used to calculate the probabilities for this region is from 1880 to 2004.

Looking in the spreadsheet, we see that the annual probability of an intense hurricane hitting Plaquemines County is 0.1%, which converts to a 1000 year event. However, the probability of the subarea as a whole is 0.3%, which would be a 333 year event.

Making our own numbers

Our tool here is the Historical Hurricane Tracks webpage.   We start by selecting New Orlean and then selecting category 3-5 hurricanes for ‘all years’.  For the radius, 25 nautical miles is probably the best selection; 50 nautical miles is a bit far but I’ll include that just for comparision’s sake.

The search for intense hurricanes within 25 nautical miles of New Orleans yields a very short list. Katrina, and a storm from 1860. The record goes back to 1851, so we’ll say so there were 2 storms in a 151 year period. That gives a recurrence interval 75.5, which yields a 1.3% annual probability.

Expanding the radius adds a few more storms to the list, three from pre-1900, as well as 1969’s Camille and 1985’s Elena.  That puts us at 7 storms, which yields a return period of 21.6 years, a 4.6% annual probability.

Discussion

As we can see from the first calculation, one can take reputable numbers and get a probability similar to that claimed by the Corps of Engineers.  However, one can take a different approach, include a little bit more data, and find a significantly higher likelihood.

Our probability utilizing the 50 nm radius is almost certainly too high, while Camille and Elena both affected New Orleans, they were did not have the same impact as Katrina.

So, the ‘true’ probability probably lies somewhere between that suggested by the calculation using a 25 nm radius and that suggested by the Probability Project, so somewhere between .33 and 1.33%. The difference lies in methodology, with the 1.33% number being dependent on going a few years back in the record than the Probability Project did. (This isn’t the only example of reaching just further back changes the probabilities substantially.  Georgia was not impacted by an intense hurricane in the 20th century.  However, three such hurricanes struck between 1854 and 1898.)

One consideration that could to serve to pull the estimated probabilities closer to that of the Corps of Engineers is that in our calculations, we are treating all category 3-5 hurricanes as the equal of Katrina. That is an assumption that is somewhat shaky and open to argument.  Dennis of 2005, for example, made landfall as a category 3, yet it had nowhere near the large extent high winds that Katrina did. Because of that, a Dennis landfall in the same spot as Katrina, would not have had the same effects that Katrina’s landfall did.  Because of this, one could argue for the necessity to adjust our calculated numbers to filter out storms that were not truly Katrina’s equal.  In the case of the number derived from the Probability Project, such an adjustment would likely put the revised probability very near that claimed by the Corps of Engineers.

Notes/commentary on hurricane season forecasts

(Inspired by / in response to Brendan Loy’s commentary on hurricane season forecasts)

Background / history of hurricane season forecasts

A pair of papers published in the September 1984 issue of the American Meteorological Society’s Monthly Weather review outlined the basis of a forecast scheme devised by Colorado State University’s William Gray that could be used to predict the number of tropical and hurricanes that would occur in the season ahead. Under the original scheme a forecast would be released in June, with an update in August. Further research conducted in ensuing years gave Gray and his graduate students confidence that a good forecast could be put out even earlier, in December and such forecasts started being released in 1992.

At first, this was a fairly unnoticed experimental research exercise, somewhere along the way insurance companies realized an interest in the research and became a source of funding for it. Somewhere along the way, due to early success in the forecasts, they were released to the media. (I can recall them being reported in the early-mid 1990’s. (1994 Virginian Pilot article on the Gray forecast, for example.)

Until 1998, the Colorado State team was the only player in the seasonal forecasting game. The next effort was borne out of an effort “to assist the competitiveness of the UK insurance industry by using the UK science effort to improve the assessment of risk”. It is now known as Tropical Storm Risk. To my knowledge they don’t do much to push their forecasts to the public, they just make them available.

In 1999, a specialized agency of the National Weather Service, the Climate Prediction Service quietly issued a brief outlook on the 199 hurricane season. In 2001, this outlook was expanded to give a range of numbers for forecast activity, rather than a general ‘below average’ or ‘above average’. By 2003 this outlook was being pushed out to the media via press release and press conferences were being held by 2005.

In 2006 a team from NC State University issued a seasonal forecast at the AMS hurricane conference. It was little noticed at the time, but became much more realized after their forecast of a quieter season than anyone else anticpated was verified (NCSU team called mild hurricane season).

My thoughts on seasonal forecasts

I don’t take too much interest in them personally and don’t like how they are being pushed to the general public. They are a experimental works in progress and should be treated at such. I am most displeased with NOAA’s trumpeting of their forecasts. It gives the public the sense that these are operational forecasts that are on par with the other forecasts of the National Weather Service and that is definitely not the case. Brendan’s post included a question he was posed, “Where are all the hurricanes the NHC had forecast for the last 2 years? just curious as to why we should panic over predictions that have little or no accuracy?”) This shows the confusion that the hurricane season forecasts cause because the National Hurricane Center is not the agency that puts out the seasonal forecast and, as I just said, the seasonal forecasts do not have the same accuracy as the operational forecasts put out by the NHC.

As one can discern by examining who backed the earlier forecasting ventures, these forecasts are most useful for people who have a stake in the macro-scale, namely insurance companies. They are of little value to individuals. National Hurricane Center forecaster Richard Pasch said it best: “An active year is the year when you get hit.” These forecasts as they are know don’t tell people that and may instead give them a false sense of security when an inactive year is forecast. (1992, the year of Andrew was a quiet season if you didn’t live in South Florida).

On ‘crying wolf’, overforecasting seasons

This Excel file contains all of the Colorado State forecasts from 1984 to to 2006 and include what the actual numbers ended up being. There have been three seasons that were significantly overforecast: 1993, 1997, 2006. The common thread between those three years: El Niño conditions that were either totally unexpected by the forecast team or were stronger than expected. On the flip side, there have been an equal number of seasons that were significantly under-forecast: 1995, 2001, and 2005. Both TSR and the CPC had similar issues for the seasons that they were doing forecasts.

On ‘cooking the books’ , naming storms that wouldn’t have been named in the past and/or are undeserving of a name

One of the comments to Brendan’s post raised this issue, which has come up in recent years as an allegation that the number of storms are being inflated to help meet a forecast number.

There is a bit of truth to it, there are some storms in recent years that were classified as tropical storms that wouldn’t have been in the past.  This is because meteorologists have many more tools in the toolbox than they used to.  There is a mountain of data available from remote sensing that wasn’t available ten years ago and is that data that enables forecasters to realize that some of those storms that once would have been considered non-tropical do in fact have tropical characteristics (Chantal being a prime example of this, based solely on appearance it would have been considered non-tropical).

This concern to make sure that every tropical storm gets classified is not restricted to the present.  The Re-Analysis Project of the Hurricane Research Division is devoted to reviewing as much as possible on past seasons to find storms that were missed or were stronger than originally thought.

Recent past, present, and near future of Western Hemisphere tropical weather

To briefly summarize tropical weather events in the western hemisphere since my last post:

Tropical Depression Three did become Tropical Storm Chantal but remained that for only twelve hours before becoming extra-tropical.

The disturbance east of the Lesser Antilles was at a relative peak when I wrote about the possibility of becoming the next tropical depression. After that, it had difficulty maintaining thunderstorm activity, which caused the low level circulation to open up. It then accelerated across the Caribbean and did become more impressive looking as time it did so. However, owing to its rapid movement it was unable to close off a circulation before going ashore. The description of it in Sunday morning’s Pacific Tropical Weather discussion was mildly amusing:

TROPICAL WAVE ALONG 88W N OF 5N AND IS MOVING W 10 TO 15 KT.
THIS WAS ABOUT AS STRONG AS A WAVE GETS BEFORE DEVELOPING INTO A
DEPRESSION. THE ONLY PROBLEM WAS IT MOVED OVER LAND..THUS
CONVECTION HAS BECOME SCATTERED. STRONGEST CONVECTION THIS
MORNING IS ON THE PACIFIC COASTS OF EL SALVADOR AND GUATEMALA
WITH ANOTHER BATCH OVER NRN GUATEMALA.

After that, the only feature of remote interest in the hemisphere was an area of low pressure that was moving westward across the Pacific.  After plodding along for a few days with multiple competing circulations, one circulation became dominant on Wednesday, which led to the rapid development of Tropical Storm Flossie.  This morning the storm intensified some more to become Hurricane Flossie, which is only the second hurricane to form in the Eastern Pacific basin this season.

  Eastern Pacific Hurricane Flossie

There have been conflicting forecasts from the models on the future of Flossie relative to how it may effect the Hawaiian islands.  The current NHC forecast for Flossie takes it south of the islands as a moderate tropical storm.  Because of the potential threat, a hurricane hunter will fly to check it out on Monday.

While this was going on in the Pacific, tranquility ruled nearly all of the Atlantic basin, which is in it’s longest stretch without a hurricane since the time between the last hurricane of 2000 (October 20) and the first hurricane of 2001 (September 8).  It’s been 302 days since Hurricane Isaac weakened to a tropical storm on October 2 of last year.

A big reason for the recent quiet in the Atlantic has been due to most of it being covered by dry stable air. From the visual satellite image below, one can see the western boundary of it, which runs from the southeast Bahamas southeast across the Lesser Antilles down to the Intertropcial Convergence zone.  This area extends eastward along 10 N almost all the way back to Africa.

While most of the tropical Atlantic Ocean is dominated by the dry air, the Caribbean is moist.  A few of the global forecast models have been forecasting something to form out of the western Caribbean and enter the southwest Gulf of Mexico by Tuesday of next week.  It is a plausible scenario and the western Caribbean will undoubtedly be watched closely by the National Hurricane Center for any signs of the forecast becoming reality.  One of the concerns about this scenario owes to a side-effect of the high pressure that has dominated the southeast and made it so #$%! hot: It’s resulted in a relatively cloudless Gulf of Mexico, which in turn raises Sea Surface Temperatures and increases the heat content that can serve as fuel for storms.  There is a noticable difference in the Gulf of Mexico heat potential today compared to that of a week ago.

 

 

The other area that models have been forecasting development to occur in is at the opposite end of the Atlantic:

 

At the extreme right hand side of an image from this morning, one can see an area of thunderstorms that is coming off the coast of Africa.  Over the past few days, an increasing number of models have forecast development out of this as soon as Saturday evening.  The NHC will watch this closely to see if the thunderstorm activity is maintained as the system goes entirely ‘feet wet’; if it does it could be tagged as a system of interest by tomorrow morning.

The lull ends / Tropical Depression Three forms / Is Four on the way?

After two and a half days of scrutiny that involved a sudden appearance followed by peaks and valleys in appearance, and seemingly missing its window for development, the area of low pressure northwest of Bermuda was designated as Tropical Depression Three by the National Hurricane Center this evening

Tropical Depression Three Advisory Number One

Tropical Depression Three Forecast Discussion

This comes as a bit of a surprise, because while the system became organized, it did not have much of the appearance of a pure tropical system. The analysts at the Satellite Services Division (who, along with the Tropical Analysis and Forecasting Branch analyze satellite imagery to provide estimates of storm position and intensity), had classified it as being sub-tropical this afternoon and extra-tropical this evening.

The depression, which is not a threat to the United States, is given a 24 hour window to have a chance at becoming Tropical Storm Chantal before it completely sheds its tropical characteristics. I’m doubtful of this occurring… however, I was doubtful of this depression forming in the first place, so we shall have to wait and see.

—————————————————————————————————————————

In the middle of last week , a couple of the global forecast models started to sporadically forecast tropical cyclone formation in the Tropical Atlantic. While it is rare that one of those forecasts actually verifies (i.e. it actually forecasts a storm that forms exactly as predicted), such forecasts are a useful indicator that conditions are changing to become more favorable for development and while maybe none of the particular tropical waves in existence will actualy develop, its likely that one of the next few will.

The first such candidate is currently about 800 miles west of the Windward Islands and is described thusly in this evening’s Tropical Weather Outlook:

A WESTWARD-MOVING TROPICAL WAVE LOCATED ABOUT 800 MILES EAST OF THE
SOUTHERN WINDWARD ISLANDS CONTINUES TO GENERATE SHOWERS AND A FEW
THUNDERSTORMS. ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS APPEAR FAVORABLE FOR SOME
DEVELOPMENT OF THIS SYSTEM OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS.

This afternoon, and early this evening, visual and infrared satellite imagery indicated a circulation center along 10° North, that was fairly devoid of convection (with Quikscat indicating that there was somewhat of a surface circulation). As the evening progressed, convection started to spring up 80-100 miles to the northwest and it appears that the circulation is reforming to the north-east of what existed earlier.

The system is in a somewhat favorable enviroment; wind shear is under 20 knots and the dreaded Saharan Air Layer, which had a strong grip on the basin for much of the month is not a factor at this time.

The big factor to its advantage, which is what causes the SHIPS intensity model to forecast it eventually become a hurricane, is the big jump in oceanic heat content as the system moves westward. Its current motion would bring it into the area of increased heat content on Wednesday. The area where the heat content starts to increase is coincidentally near the eastern edge of the area of responsibility for the Hurricane Hunters.  If this system shows signs of development, a plane will check it out on Wednesday afternoon.

Quiet season?

(Note: After going back to look up the tidbit from Glen Reynolds that inspired this, I discovered that the ever alert Brendan Loy posted a response generally similar to what I had in mind. I press on regardless. Please bear in mind that this is not directed at Mr. Reynolds himself; it is the people that write stuff that give people like Glen the impression that things are slow/quiet that I’m aiming at. See Brendan’s post for one example.)

“GOOD THING IT SEEMS TO BE A SLOW SEASON” - Instapundit

Calling a hurricane season slow when it’s July is a little bit like calling a baseball game low-scoring when it’s only in the second inning. It is a particular folly when the season has not been a shutout, but rather are already two named storms in the books. This becomes evident when one examines where we stood on this day in the previous seasons of the current active cycle:

• 1995: Two named storms. The distinctive moment of the season (four storms at once) came in the last week of August.
• 1996: Two named storms (one of them a category three hurricane, which would put that season ahead,qualitatively.)
• 1997: Two named storms. Three more formed in July, but, more notably, none formed in August. El Niño conditions made for a quiet season.
• 1998: Zero named storms. All of the action, which included a category five hurricane, came after 27 July.
• 1999: One named storm. Nothing formed in July, but five major hurricanes formed later.
• 2000: Zero named storms. As in 1999, nothing formed in July, but the rest of the season was active.
• 2001: One named storm. The hurricanes didn’t come until September. (Because the one storm Tropical Storm the only tropical storm to have its name retired, one could rank 2001 ahead of this season qualitatively).
• 2002: One named storm. As in 2001, June, July, and August went by without a hurricane.
• 2003: Two named storms in the books, with a third in progress.
• 2004: Zero named storms. The”fun” didn’t start until July 31.
• 2005: The Season Like No Other is the only season that truly makes everything else look quiet. It was at this very time two years ago when the fifth storm, Emily got its name. Looking back on things, the first feeling I had that it was not a normal season was on July 9th, when Dennis became a category four in the Gulf of Mexico . That general sentiment was reflected in a choice quote 5 PM Emily discussion on July 12th : THE 2005 HURRICANE SEASON SEEMS TO HAVE LITTLE INTEREST IN CLIMATOLOGY. So, even in the most active season on record, it took getting into July to start to have a clue that something unique was going on.
• 2006: One named storm. El Niño conditions made for the quietest season since 2007.

So, out of the 12 seasons, 2007 is currently ahead of 7 quantitatively, and on par with an additional 3. Qualitatively, there’s only 3 seasons that clearly stand in front of it. If this season has been ’slow’ up to this point, it’s because hurricane seasons are usually slow before August.

A different approach to underline this point: When do the notorious storms from? Since the practice began in 1954, there have been 67 storm names retired. Here is how they break-out by the month in which they formed:

June: 3

July: 4

August: 23

September: 26

October: 10

November: 1

90% of the storms that had their name retired formed after July. From this it is clear that, lacking a strong El Niño already in progress, one has to wait until after Septembr before being able to reasonably state that it’s a quiet, uneventful season.

NHC 2006 forecast review

The National Hurricane Center released it’s annual forecast verification report today. The report reviews the accuracy of the NHC’s track and intensity forecasts, as well as those of the forecast models, for both the Atlantic and eastern Pacific basins. Here’s some highlights for the Atlantic basin:

- The track forecasts for the time periods of 12-72 hours set new records for accuracy, breaking records set in 2004. The errors for 24, 48, and 72 hours were 50.8, 97.0, and 148.7 nautical miles, respectively.

- Of the models routinely available to the forecaster’s in time to be considered for their forecast, only the consenus models beat the NHC forecast across multiple time periods.  The Florida State Super-Ensemble was second-best among these models; it was slightly edged out by the GUNA consensus, which is a simple average of the GFDL, UKMET, NOGAPS, and GFS models.

- The report also includes performance of models that are not available to the NHC before forecast time. The model from the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts, commonly referred to as “The European”, displayed superior performance for the 72-120 hour time periods (it’s error at 5 days was a mere 162.7 nautical miles, while the GUNA’s  was 227.1).

- As far as overall accuracy goes, the story was the same as in previous years for the NHC’s intensity forecasts, the average error was in line with that of the past five years.  While there was an overall tendency to under-forecast storms in 2005, the reverse was true in 2006.

- As far as performance relative to their statistical baseline model goes, however, the story was (more) discouraging for the forecasters.  The forecast generated by the simple SHIFOR model was better than the NHC’s from 24 hours onwards. At the extended periods, the NHC forecast was 30-45% worse than that of SHIFOR.

- The forecast models were similarly embarassed. On average, after 24 hours, none of the state of the art models beat out the model that was designed in 1979.