by Susan Klatz Beal

Created on: June 21, 2010

Meteorology has evolved over the years, to the point where meteorologists now have all sorts of tools to use for forecasting and predicting weather. The ones that are most familiar to the average person are the Doppler radar and satellite images. With hurricanes, despite all of the advances in research and the development of more accurate forecasting models, scientists and meteorologists still have not yet been able to formulate methods that can predict where a hurricane will make landfall with any kind of absolute certainty.

There are two basic categories for predicting hurricanes: by using seasonal hurricane activity predictions and by analyzing the track of a current hurricane.

*Seasonal hurricane activity predictions -

Scientists are able to predict the number of named storms and their breakdown by intensity. From there, they break down that total number into the number of hurricanes, intense hurricanes and tropical storms. They can also predict the wind speed and intensity of sustained winds in both hurricanes and tropical storms.

The researchers who analyze this type of data use elementary statistics to calculate these things. When comparing the data from previous seasons, sustained wind speeds follow the Poisson Distribution and this is accurate with a reasonable amount of consistency.

*Predicting storms -

The way named storms are predicted is by looking at past storms that occurred and by taking the current measures of various climate related factors. At the beginning of the season, however, named storms can only be labeled as probabilities. Meteorologists cannot predict that any given named storms will hit the Florida coast in a specific place on a specific date. What they are able to say, is that there may be a 5% chance that a major storm will hit the Florida coast at some point between April and November of a given year.

*Tracking hurricane routes -

Hurricanes can only be tracked after they have formed, and because of this, scientists may be better able to predict the trajectory of hurricane. To do this, a cone is used to represent the path. When scientists and/or meteorologists are first predicting the path of a hurricane, the cone will be wide. This is to allow for a margin of error and to give people a general idea of the area that may be affected by the hurricane. This kind of information is essential because it can help people plan a course of action and make the necessary preparations to keep themselves, their family and pets safe.

*Original

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