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One Model Nailed Hurricane Ian’s Track While Another Busted Completely
Model uncertainty affected hurricane preparation in the hardest hit areas.
When the National Hurricane Center (NHC) generates its famed cone of uncertainty, it uses a slew of models to try and build consensus around where a particular tropical system could eventually end up. Sometimes the models build early consensus but many times consensus struggles to materialize. Without solid consensus, local governments and emergency officials are left guessing, along with the public, about where a hurricane might go. That is exactly what happened with Hurricane Ian.
In the days leading up to the catastrophic landfall, the NHC continued to caution that there was an unusually high amount of ambiguity regarding the track of the monster storm. A large number of macro factors were interacting in ways that made a firm prediction nearly impossible. There was an interaction between a large trough entrenched over the northern half of the United States, a large subtropical ridge to the east, building high pressure over Texas, the materialization of yet another trough in the Gulf of Mexico, and the prevalence of wind shear eating the storm from the west. The computer models took all of this information and continued to spit out different tracks, different paths, and…
