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Misinterpreting hurricane forecasts
21–30 of 112 posts
Re: Misinterpreting hurricane forecasts
#22Re: Misinterpreting hurricane forecasts
#23"Graphics like these need to be read closely and carefully. Only then can we grasp what they're really saying." A cone showing the likely paths of the storm's eye seems like the incorrect graphic to communicate to the public. The public cares about how much rain and wind they are going to get. The take-away to me is that maybe we should just emphasize maps of expected cumulative rainfall and wind speed, and not prese…
"expected" is perhaps the wrong metric here. There's a difference between being certain of getting 10mm of rain and 20 km/h winds, and a 10% chance of 100mm rain and 200 km/h winds, and you want people to prepare accordingly.
The thrust of the article - although it can't state it directly and frames it as a graphics/communications issue - is that more people should prepare for hurricanes, that the cost of more false positives outweighs the downsides of increased false negatives.
Re: Misinterpreting hurricane forecasts
#24Looks like the scientific illiteracy sponsored by this country's education system is really starting to pay off!
What kind of scientific literacy would make this obvious? They need a better presentation.
I agree. It's no different than building good software. If most of your users misunderstand your interface, you fix the interface not the users.
Re: Misinterpreting hurricane forecasts
#25This article is a little bit misleading, unless I am misinterpreting his pictures. But that would be horrible for an article trying to explain pictures.
Here is the graphical archive for all 5 day forecasts of Irma: https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2017/IRMA_graphics.php?prod...
Now note the image that the article depicts for Hurricane Irma with this text: "These misunderstandings have real-world consequences. As Hurricane Irma approached Florida’s east coast in 2017, people near the cone’s center began preparing and even evacuating."
The image and the graphical archive do not correlate. Where did the author get this image from? The actual NHC cone covers the entire width of Florida (apart from maybe the smallest western tip of the keys) for days before the storm arrives. Its actually pretty accurate.
IMO, this article and its poor visualizations is part of the problem.
Re: Misinterpreting hurricane forecasts
#26"The National Hurricane Center says cones will contain the path of the storm center only 60 to 70 percent of the time" Sounds like the communications fix is easy. Increase the uncertainty to 90-95% which also increases the cone size. And make it blood red and tell anyone inside the red that they need to be prepared. "Hurricanes are also hundreds of miles wide, and the cone shows only the possible path of the storm’s…
> prepared
And tell them how to prepare.
Florida native and I've live here all my life. If you're within the radius of hurricane force winds, live near the coast, live in a flood prone area, live in a shed, live in a trailer, you should take these storms seriously. If you're inland, and not in a shed or trailer, you should be fine if you don't do something stupid, like stand outside. Don't go out and hurricanes are rarely more than a nuisance to those inland.
This is a compact storm; it's HFW extend out 15 miles. Anyone outside of that and not on the coast isn't going to have much to worry about.
Re: Misinterpreting hurricane forecasts
#27I live in a hurricane area. We don't use the news for any information other than watching the weatherman stand in the storm and film, and satellite imagery while it's going on. We use noaa.gov, it has all those prediction maps. It's very good. Here's Dorian's maps: https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at5+shtml/144923.s... For those that haven't been through these, the predictions do shift up to the last minute,…
I'm also in a hurricane area - I understand, use, and really like the NHC maps as well. I'm not sure what those red cones in the slideshow were, but the definitely weren't NHC graphics.
Re: Misinterpreting hurricane forecasts
#28I live in a hurricane area. We don't use the news for any information other than watching the weatherman stand in the storm and film, and satellite imagery while it's going on. We use noaa.gov, it has all those prediction maps. It's very good. Here's Dorian's maps: https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at5+shtml/144923.s... For those that haven't been through these, the predictions do shift up to the last minute,…
I "still" live in a hurricane area, but less so than when I lived at the beach. As OP mentions, I only use NOAA's page. Anything else is flair or outright deception [1]. Florence was bad, but the video clearly shows the reporter hamming it up.
There are people that simply cannot afford to evacuate or otherwise choose not to. When I first moved to Wilmington, I was scared of Category 1's. After living there for a decade, I didn't even prepare for anything less than a Cat 4 - unless you count grabbing beer for the inevitable "hurricane party".
While I will accept the articles premise that people can't understand graphs, my major issue is in the study [2] they refer to. The surveys are all retrospectives on assessing uncertainty after the fact. It would be like asking people why they thought a stock would go up when it ended up going down. In the end, who's to blame? Where do we direct the pitchforks? Or is it simply a call to learning how the charts work? If it is the 3rd option, then Times is fearmongering a little hard in my option.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyrRCx8-fZk
[2] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f7c0/4b6eb883cf7d7fdee007cd...
Re: Misinterpreting hurricane forecasts
#29[deleted]
Re: Misinterpreting hurricane forecasts
#30If people are actually that stupid, this post will be useless.