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Misinterpreting hurricane forecasts

nytimes.com

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Re: Misinterpreting hurricane forecasts

#41

Post by mehrdadn »

allday wrote: post #16

Wow, this story is annoying me a lot more than I expected. There's a whole lot of shaming of the layperson in here, with a wink wink nudge nudge that if people would just _think a little_, they could save themselves a lot of trouble. > Graphics like these need to be read closely and carefully. Only then can we grasp what they're really saying. Well, that's ridiculous. If these graphics were in an app, we'd tear them…

Seriously. I already know everything in the aricle (because I've read similar before) and yet I still have trouble remembering it when reading a map and trying to visualize the area I actually care about. I can't imagine how the heck purple are supposed to just deal with this and wrap their head around it, especially regarding an emergency.

I'm wondering if the people who didn't prepare due to a misleading map despite a technically accurate prediction can sue for damage? Not that I would enjoy seeing NOAA et al. in a lawsuit, but if nothing else has gotten them to fix these, maybe a lawsuit will?

Re: Misinterpreting hurricane forecasts

#42

Post by matwood »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #26
acchow wrote: post #10

"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 r…

> And tell them how to prepare.

Exactly. I made a comment above that mentioned the mass migration to the coasts means that many people do not have years of experience dealing with hurricanes. What you just said is common sense for you and I, but may be a complete unknown to someone who just moved from NJ or Ohio.

Re: Misinterpreting hurricane forecasts

#43

Post by mehrdadn »

If we want to show people a probability map, why not just show maps for "probability of necessary evacuation" or "probability of serious structural damage" or similar? Instead of probability of hurricane center path or whatever that nobody cares about?

Re: Misinterpreting hurricane forecasts

#44

Post by Jabbles »

_ea1k wrote: post #25

This 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 Hur…

That is very concerning.

Here's an article written at the time: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/national/hurric...

"Forecasting models predicted the storm’s path with relative accuracy."

Re: Misinterpreting hurricane forecasts

#45

Post by spectramax »

_ea1k wrote: post #25

This 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 Hur…

The general problem that the article raises is still valid even though the pictures don’t match.

The article is pointing out that the increasing circle sizes represent variation of centerline paths, not the actual size of the hurricane (which is a common misconception). Just because the plots don’t match doesn’t make the article irrelevant.

Re: Misinterpreting hurricane forecasts

#46

Post by penagwin »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #18
RandomBacon wrote: post #13

On mobile, the "subscribe" bar at the bottom covers up the text. I had to use a "remove cookie notification" bookmark to be able to read the text. javascript:(function(){(function () {var i, elements = document.querySelectorAll('body *');for (i = 0; i

Oh cool, how frequently does this bookmarklet actually work?

It appears to just set anything positioned as fixed to being normal instead.

Which should be most popups/cookie notifications. Might break certain websites that try to be clever or "artsy" but as a bookmarklet it shouldn't cause any issues.

Re: Misinterpreting hurricane forecasts

#47

Post by _ea1k »

savagedata wrote: post #38

When Irma was making landfall two years ago, I did an animation demonstrating this for r/DataIsBeautiful. [1] The real hurricane path is in red with the forecast at each timestamp in black. If you look at the forecasts through time, you can see that they're frequently off by a distance the width of Florida. (This final graphic is an amalgamation of all the useful comments I got on the original thread. It was a really…

It would be great if this also had the cone overlaid on top of it. It is often interesting to read the forecaster's notes along with each of these graphics, as it is fairly common for the "line" to basically just be an average of several models without much expectation for it to be accurate in itself.

Re: Misinterpreting hurricane forecasts

#48

Post by _ea1k »

spectramax wrote: post #45
_ea1k wrote: post #25

This 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 Hur…

The general problem that the article raises is still valid even though the pictures don’t match. The article is pointing out that the increasing circle sizes represent variation of centerline paths, not the actual size of the hurricane (which is a common misconception). Just because the plots don’t match doesn’t make the article irrelevant.

I get your point, but there is another angle here. People have a strong tendency not to trust forecasters, despite relative accuracy. This article implies a lack of accuracy that wasn't actually the case.

It would be incredibly easy to come away from this article with the wrong lessons.

Re: Misinterpreting hurricane forecasts

#49

Post by haubey »

cowboy69 wrote: post #40
haubey wrote: post #33

I grew up in South Florida, and I'm surprised to hear people think the storm is getting bigger over time. I guess that's just something you grow up with knowing down there. People on the west coast tell me they're terrified of hurricanes, and I'm terrified of earthquakes. You can generally get out of the way of a hurricane if you feel you need to... There are of course common sense things to do to be prepared: get bo…

This is a great comment that accurately (and nonsensationally) depicts what it’s like to live/grow up in a hurricane area.

Thank you. I will say that we are relatively lucky in that we live inland, so we didn't have to worry about storm surge, in a newer suburb that had its power lines underground. We maybe lost 20 minutes of power during Wilma. I have family that lives in East Ft. Lauderdale, they were out of power for two weeks.

Re: Misinterpreting hurricane forecasts

#50

Post by Ancalagon »

choward wrote: post #34
Ancalagon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

confidence intervals...

Ok, so what if I live just outside the cone? What does that mean? The map is the same color for 1 mile from the cone and 1,000 miles from the cone. The map is flawed not the people looking at it.

I mean take a look at this bell curve chart with a 0.95 confidence interval (what I assumed the confidence interval of the hurricane path was): https://www.statisticshowto.datasciencecentral.com/wp-conten...

Its all one color...

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