Moving on from Hanna, as my focus is on forecasting. To be clear, Hanna remains a major issue for the Eastern U.S. and Southeastern Canada, with respect to heavy surf, beach flooding, heavy rain, and gusty winds. But the forecasting perspective is essentially done with. So, we move on to Ike.
Ah, crow, a forecasters tastiest meal. Two days ago I said that it would be very unlikely for Ike to push west of the Florida Panhandle... and even as far west as the Panhandle looked a bit unlikely. I even tussled with a commenter about that. And, frankly, under the same circumstances, I'd make the same forecast. Why? Because it is uncommon to see all long range models blow a forecast in the same direction. Typically, long range errors from forecasters is because we pick the wrong model or model cluster to trust. This time, all models from a few days ago blew this - or so it seems (given the big change, we need to be on alert for another shift). We'll address why the models would shift like this, and get to the forecast after the jump...
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