Thursday, May 31, 2007
News

Betting on the weather

Can we really predict this year’s hurricane season?

Willie Cole fishes in front of a building destroyed by Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath near the 17th Street Canal last week in New Orleans, just before hurricane season, which starts on June 1. CREDIT: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Hurricanes in Georgia “Georgia is going to be hit by a Katrina-type hurricane. It’s just a question of when, and the effects are going to be devastating.” —Georgia’s state climatologist, David Stooksbury “It only takes one hurricane to destroy your property and ruin your life, and that could be the only one for the season. It doesn’t take 17.” —Steve Lyons, hurricane expert, The Weather Channel “We call it ‘YOYO 72.’ You’re on your own for 72 hours.” —Buzz Weiss, spokesman for the Georgia Emergency Management Association, on how individuals should prepare for hurricanes

By Mark Woolsey

At this point, plotting the hurricane season is still a bit of a gamble, but two major hurricane forecast teams think that, after a quieter-than-expected 2006 season, howling winds, rain and storm surges will return big-time for the 2007 season, which began on June 1.

In early April, longtime researchers Philip Klotzbach and William Gray of Colorado State University predicted the 2007 season will have almost twice the average activity, with 17 named storms, nine hurricanes and five major hurricanes, as well as a 74 percent chance of one of them hitting the U.S. coast.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center followed on May 22 with only a slight variation, predicting a 75 percent chance of an above-normal season, with 13 to 17 named storms, seven to 10 hurricanes and possibly three to five intense storms of Category 3 strength or higher.

But in Atlanta, the Weather Channel has declined to jump aboard the “let’s make a forecast” bandwagon. Hurricane expert Dr. Steve Lyons says that’s “because there’s not enough skill in it to make it worthwhile for the general public. Our general premise is to be equally prepared each year, whether an active season is called for or not.” He also notes that records show a poor correlation between the number of storms in a given season and hurricanes that make it to the United States. We could have a plethora of storms, he suggests, “and they could all miss.”

Lyons notes that, during the last unusually active dozen years, there has been an average of 15 named storms each year, compared with a long-term average baseline of 10. And with scientists thinking that the overall busy pattern will continue, “it doesn’t take too much rocket science to forecast an above-average year.”

Georgia’s state climatologist, David Stooksbury, sounds the same note, and suggests that forecasts should improve down the road. But at the current state of the science, forecasts “don’t take much skill when we take into account those larger-scale factors, which we already know.”

Those factors, say government and university scientists, include the El Niño and La Niña cycle. A late-developing El Niño, which spawns stronger Atlantic winds, tearing storms apart, was said to have played into a 2006 season forecast that was a bust—only about half the storms developed that forecasters expected.

This year, El Niño is gone, and, in fact, its reverse—La Niña—could crank up. The NOAA suggests via news releases that if that happens, “storm activity will likely be in the upper end of the predicted range, or perhaps even higher, depending on how strong La Niña becomes.”

Matter of time
Lyons doesn’t agree. His analysis shows no real correlation between La Niña and a busy hurricane season in the Atlantic basin.

“But keep in mind,” he says, “people don’t want to know about the Atlantic basin as a whole. They want to know about U.S. landfalls.”

The Colorado State forecast opines that the chances of at least one U.S. landfall by a major hurricane along our coastline this year stand at 74 percent, compared to a 52 percent average for the past century, which is pretty scary.

As for Georgia, the state hasn’t had a major hit on its coast by a Category 3 or higher hurricane since 1898, notes Buzz Weiss, spokesman for the Georgia Emergency Management Association (GEMA). Are we overdue?

“Georgia is going to be hit by a Katrina-type hurricane,” says Stooksbury bluntly. “It’s just a question of when, and the effects are going to be devastating.”

At the same time, he points out that a 100-mile stretch of coast like Georgia’s Atlantic front door stands just a small chance of being slammed in a particular calendar year. And even though the last was in 1898, the Golden Isles have been walloped six times in the past 200 years—an average of about once every 33 years.

While not really buying into the numbers, local forecasters and planners credit them with helping to fight complacency and kick-start planning.

GEMA gears up well in advance, with exercises like a tabletop hurricane response earlier this year with the Feds and agencies from eight Southeastern states. Another dry run gauged the agency’s “contra-flow” plans for speeding hurricane evacuees away from the coast.

But Weiss and his cohorts preach individual disaster planning and personal responsibility as well. And that applies as much to residents along the coast as it does to those as far inland as Atlanta.

“Our biggest enemy is complacency,” he says, noting that areas hundreds of miles inland can suffer wind damage, flooding and tornadoes. One need only go back to Opal’s swipe at metro Atlanta in 1995, when the city’s streets flooded halfway up car doors.

Preparations should include creating a family disaster plan and packing a 72-hour disaster kit, Weiss says.

“We call it ‘YOYO 72,’” he says. “You’re on your own for 72 hours.” Such kits should include a three-day supply of nonperishable food, bottled water, prescription and other medicine, changes of clothes, hygiene supplies, portable radio batteries and a NOAA weather radio.

Lyons echoes the preparation push: “It only takes one hurricane to destroy your property and ruin your life, and that could be the only one for the season. It doesn’t take 17.” SP