It is the season, and there is a hurricane heading for the gulf with another 1-3 in the pipeline from Africa
Master's Wunderblog is the place for news
but the models used for forecasting are on the web.
Forecasts that far in advance are highly uncertain, but current models show Gustav shooting the straits between Cuba and Yucatan into the Gulf as a major hurricane.
Could turn any direction after that, though models are converging on impact more to the northwest side, on monday-ish.
Full set of models is at the Tropical Cyclone Genesis page at FSU.
Play with different models for different storms.
Fascinating, in a morbid sort of way.
More like this
I like computers, really I do. Computational physics is a good thing. However, there is a small problem. The problem is that there seems to be a large number of people out there that treat numerical methods and simulations as something different than theoretical calculations.
(two entries from my old blog)
Here I am, at my parents house. There is no power at my house and Louisiana in September with no power is really a whole bunch of no-fun. But maybe I can use this time to talk about science.
**The Nature of Science**
My model has two parameters (pre 1920 rate, post 1920 rate).
Your model has four parameters (starting rate, first decrease, second
decrease, year that rate of decrease changed). The more parameters
that your model has, the easier it is to fit the data.
Frank Crary said:
Actually, we should take the present Gustav forecast as a reminder that New Orleans is still inadequately protected, FEMA is still inadequately funded and most of the organizational issues that contributed to the New Orleans disaster remain in effect. The odds of a major hurricane striking New Orleans in any given year are about 1 in 30 - but that's very poor bet when the cost of a strike is likely to exceed $100 billion dollars, hundreds of human lives, and tens of thousands displaced.
(Note: Hati, Jamaica, and Cuba are obviously in far more danger right now - and in fact, past tropical storm landfalls on Hati have killed thousands.)
Yeah, the current tracks are no-win - after Haiti, Gustav looks to stay over water and intensify. It then can either go straight on, hitting NOLA as maybe category 4. If it swerves west, Florida, rainsoaked, gets it again. If it goes east it trashes the oil rigs.
But predictive power that far ahead is poor, so maybe something else will happen.