Irene Reflections

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/08/28/irene-forecasts-on-track-not-up-to-speed-on-wind/

Hurricane Irene came as no surprise to forecasters says Fox News.  They knew the path that she would take and they predicted it almost spot-on.  However, the only thing they were uncertain about was the strength of her storm. 

While forecasters have made huge strides in predicting hurricanes and mapping out their potential path of destruction, they have not made much progress in being able to predict their strength.  Better computer models and data to go into those models are the two reasons for better predictions of the storms' paths.  However, predicting the strength of a hurricane is too finite of a task for a large global computer model to do.  There has been much improvement in hurricane predictions, yet there is still research to be done on how those predictions can be better. 

I found this article very interesting.  I am a huge weather geek. 

I love looking at the radar, watching the Weather Channel, and I get very excited when we have dramatic changes in weather.  My anticipation goes through the roof when I hear a big storm is headed our way.  So, it is a good thing that I live in an area where I can experience all four seasons.  I am amazed at how they can predict storms (like Irene), analyze the data, and know what to expect.  I think that it is so neat that they can gather endless amounts of information, calculate it, and then in turn know what the weather will be like.  I would not necessarily enjoy finding and calculating all that data, but I do find it interesting and amazing how they do what they do.  The National Weather Service has made huge improvements over the years in their ability to detect storms and give proper warning to those going to be affected.

As technology advances, and we learn more through the use of satellites and computes, I will be excited to see how weather predictions advance.