Mike Naso, the 16-year-old Alternative Hurricane Forecaster

I get tired of television weather after a while. The TV meteorologists use "south" to mean "down", speak of popcorn thunderstorms, and say they are marching or rolling, even though weather systems have neither legs or wheels. Further, they only give you regurgitated versions of the NOAA forecast, and in the case of hurricanes, only give you what the National Hurricane Center has given them. So I go to the Internet, and look up models such as Global Forecassting System (GFS), NOGAPS, MM5, ETA/NAM, and a bunch of other alphabet hurricane soup. They give me some idea that the local Weather Bureau and the TV weatherpeople won't give you, but what does it all mean?

16-year-old Mike Naso of the Storm2K forum makes a good attempt at answering that question. He hosts a video show on the board, using a webcam and techniques for putting videos on the Internet. He shows us the map of the country, the storms that are on it, including hurricanes, tropical storms, tropical depressions, tropical waves, and even bunches of clouds called Invests and shows us what the models say about where they are going. His most recent video shows no less than six systems, one off the Atlantic Coast, Tropical Storm Franklin, one threatening to hit the Gulf States (they've already had enough punishment), and three Cape Verde storms lining up in a queue coming off Africa, some of which may hit the Eastern seaboard. He explains what the models says about where all these storms are coming, and gives us visions of the future which the stodgy NOAA and NHC are not willing to give. He does preface his shows with remarks saying for us to follow the official NOAA forecast, but I think this may be for legalistic reasons. Maybe at times the NOAA forecast should be taken with a grain of salt and Mike's forecast should be the one that holds.

In any case, we now have an alternative for finding about what hurricanes and tropical storms are going to do. I note that Gary Gray does something similar with his column, but he tends to stick to hurricanes and tropical storms, while Mike considers more disorganized bunches of clouds out there. And what's coming up? The GFS says that some tropical systems will form but will break up before approaching the East Atlantic Coast, and the other models say that something more substantial and threatening will form, especially the hyper model MM5. Hyper or not, coastal interests should monitor all these things.