Congratulations all around to all the meteorologists who failed to forecast that Hurricane Michael would be a category 4 storm at this point. 4 days ago, they said it would be a category 1; 3 days ago, they said it would be category 2. 36 hours ago they said category 3. It's almost a category 5 storm. It's only been drifting northward over bizarrely warm water with limited shear. 4 days ago I was really skeptical of that category 1 forecast. Now I know I should have listened to my instinct. People should demand that the National Hurricane Center improve their forecasts, because this is the kind of failure that can cost people their lives.
This actually has been a constant pattern of late. Over the past 2 years, numerous storms have been predicted to hit a certain windspeed by a certain time, only to have it increase greatly.
The biggest issue is weather forecasters aren't held to any degree of standard, at least in the public eye. If anything, weather forecasters get the sympathic vote, because "you can't control the weather" and "they try their hardest". None of that flies in my book. They literally have one job: Predict the weather. Unlike nearly anything else, weather has existed since the beginning of time. The amount of data out there is obscene. And yet, weather forecasts are amateurishly wrong at times.
Most people, if they care to notice, notice it during big storms such as a hurricane or snow. But if you were to actually pay attention to the forecasts on a daily basis, the number of times a predicted cloudy day is actually sunny, or a sunny day winds up rainy, is excruciating often. The predicted temperature rarely hits the mark. No one is going to complain if it's a nice sunny day several degrees warmer than forecasted. And most won't notice if it's raining as predicted but instead of the temperature being 80 degrees it's 75 degrees. However, a predicted rainy day and a predicted high of 35 will have dramatically different results if the high is only 30 degrees. Same temperature difference, but conditions are dramatically different.
And when it comes to it, people don't really understand forecasts anyway. I watch a forum for a resort island area. People book their trips a year out. But they never look at the forecast until 3 weeks before they go on their trip, only to see a weather map showing nothing but thunderstorms and rain. First, they ask how the weather is today because they're going away in a few weeks. Today's weather has absolutely no impact on anything tomorrow, much less a few weeks away. The chances of a non-stop week's worth of thunderstorms is zero, and when it does happen it occurs for very short periods of time, but people freak out thinking their entire vacation will be ruined. In the few instances they actually report back after their trip, usually they acknowledge that the weather was sunny except for a few showers.
So, anyway, the point of my rant is this: The forecasters once again were wrong in their predictions. But they're not held accountable in any way, shape or form, so they will continue to have no reason to improve. If anything, local mayors and state governors will get the brunt of the criticism if there's any problems, even though they best they could do was listen to the very same weather forecasts and prepare based on what they know.
