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Vicente: A hurricane forecasters' nightmare
Vicente was an example of a hurricane forecaster's nightmare. In six hours, Vicente strengthened from a Category 1 typhoon with 80 mph winds to a Category 4 storm with 135 mph winds. Even twelve hours before this remarkable burst of intensification, there was little indication that Vicente would undergo rapid intensification.
It is very fortunate the the typhoon missed a direct hit on the heavily populated areas of Hong Kong and Macao, because there was no time to evacuate all the people who would have needed to leave for the impact of a Category 4 storm--particularly since the storm hit at night. If a similar type of storm were to affect a vulnerable area of the U.S. coast such as the Florida Keys, New Orleans, Houston/Galveston, or Tampa Bay, the death toll could easily be in the thousands.
I have great hopes that the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program (HFIP), currently in year three of a ten-year effort aimed at improving hurricane intensity forecasts by 50%, will be able to give us tools to be able to predict rapid intensification events like Vicente's several days in advance. However, we are still many years from being able to predict such events, and the hurricane forecasters' nightmare storm is still a very real possibility.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2159
It is very fortunate the the typhoon missed a direct hit on the heavily populated areas of Hong Kong and Macao, because there was no time to evacuate all the people who would have needed to leave for the impact of a Category 4 storm--particularly since the storm hit at night. If a similar type of storm were to affect a vulnerable area of the U.S. coast such as the Florida Keys, New Orleans, Houston/Galveston, or Tampa Bay, the death toll could easily be in the thousands.
I have great hopes that the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program (HFIP), currently in year three of a ten-year effort aimed at improving hurricane intensity forecasts by 50%, will be able to give us tools to be able to predict rapid intensification events like Vicente's several days in advance. However, we are still many years from being able to predict such events, and the hurricane forecasters' nightmare storm is still a very real possibility.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2159
