How Little We Know

The quote of the day can be stated simply: "How little we know about the genesis of tropical cyclones." This was National Hurricane Center's Forecaster Avila's first sentence of his 11:30 report today on Tropical Depression #9. Some models, especially the Global Forecasting System, were saying that this would continue a westward or westnorthwestward movement and eventually threaten the US East Coast. Avila went with this for his 5:30 report, saying the cyclone is going to continue to go west and strengthen into a hurricane, probably Hurricane Irene. But then at 11:30 he reported that the system had moved more north than predicted and it was getting weaker due to colder waters. He changed his prediction to having it go out to sea and stay weak, maybe not ever strong enough to get a name. This quotation is a testament to the difficulty we humans have of understanding this complex world.