It figures hurricanes would fascinate me. I was born July 18, 1955. My parents were honeymooning in Atlantic City on Oct. 14, 1954, when Hurricane Hazel hit. You do the math.
But now I’m faced with a dilemma involving my hurricane forecast.
It started in the spring of 1976.
I took a forecasting class with Joel Myers, founder of AccuWeather.com, whom I argued with every day (probably one of the reasons Joel hired me). Often, the class boiled down to he and I disagreeing over the weather, while the rest of the class looked on, mystified. I was determined to match him idea for idea, in an attempt to measure up to the best. We trash talked (I remember Joel saying one day that I had peaked) and pushed each other’s buttons (sometimes I’d leave a fake forecast on his desk to see if I could bait him into trying to go for a kill).
When I started working for AccuWeather.com, I viewed it as the weather equivalent of a wrestling team—you had all these great forecasters who would challenge one other and, by doing so, raise the level of the whole operation. In any case, I continued arguing with Joel.
One day he said something to me that, over the years, keeps coming back to me more and more. In the midst of an argument, I reminded him about some forecast he had missed, which really had nothing to do with the disagreement we were having at the time. So, he looked at me and floored me with this: “You know you’re among the best when you start getting judged by your worst day.’
Nothing he ever said in that class stopped me like that. The voice of the truth of so many forecast wars had spoken.
Over the years, I realized how true that statement is, because most people simply don’t understand what it takes to get to a level of near perfection. The standard is so high, you have to be right and you have to win—in fact, your personality accepts nothing less than winning.
In February, before anyone else, I issued a forecast for a big hurricane season. At that time, I said a La Niña would develop. (No one saw that, but my knowledge of where the global climate was and where we are going says that the La Niñas will be stronger and longer the next 30 years and the El Niños will come and go much more quickly.)
We are back to where we were in the late ’40s and ’50s, when the globe began its process of cooling that had people, in the ’70s, thinking that an ice age was coming. Since many people refuse to acknowledge or understand the past, it gives me a huge advantage. In addition, the abnormal warmth in the Atlantic (we are in its warm cycle) dictated that the only place that would be above normal this year would be the Atlantic basin. So the forecast was for 16 to 18 total storms—including 7 “impact events” (weather speak for winds greater than those experienced in a tropical storm). In June, this was upped to 18 to 21 total storms, including 8 “impact events.” Of those eight, I predicted that four or five would be hurricanes and two would be major hurricanes on the U.S. coast.
The thrust of my forecast—what I am most concerned with—is not total number of storms, but their impact. So far this year we have had five impact events, but only one (Earl) that produced hurricane conditions. But no big hits yet. No winning the big game, so to speak, even though it’s obvious now that all dissections of the pattern that led to my February prediction were on target.
Now comes the dilemma.
I think the U.S. is going to get hit enough to bring the impact forecast in line when we total everything up. In fact, the places that should see the most action the rest of the season are the eastern and central Gulf, the Caribbean and southwest Atlantic. The computer models are seeing this. That’s no assurance I am right, but a sign that my reasoning is being echoed by an objective source.
But do I root against my own forecast? If I am right, it means misery, pure and simple. Look at Bermuda; Veracruz, Mexico; and, of course, the destruction caused by recent hurricanes on our coasts.
I have wrestled with this question for years. The enthusiasm one gets from forecasting the capabilities of nature is tempered by the resulting misery. Not to mention that a lot of people don’t like me, and are ready to pounce on anything I say that goes wrong.
They want to do what I tried to do to Joel: use a mistake in one area as ammunition for another, which is a rotten way to try to win an argument. I was wrong in doing it then, and I got what I deserved.
I don’t know the answer to my hurricane dilemma. My wife, Jess, tells me my problem is that I analyze everything. If I have a bad day lifting, I want to know why. If I get a cold, I want to know where it came from.
If I’m wrong about a weather situation, I will find out why and try not to let nature beat me with the same move again. Since nature is an infinite opponent, it has infinite moves, but I try not to get beat with the same move twice.
If I am right this time, I will have done a service in warning people beforehand. Yet it will mean destruction. If I am wrong, then it calls into question everything I do. The wolves are circling, and it’s a no-win situation for me.
Perhaps there are some questions that are never meant to be answered. But the search for the answer will make you better. It’s ironic, because I tell the kids I help in the Nittany Lion Wrestling Club that you should ask questions of yourself when you train that only you and the good Lord can answer. And when you get the answer, move to the next question.
But I am stuck with this one. It is one I wrestle with often, but one I have not solved. Perhaps it’s meant to be that way. I’ll let you know if I ever get the answer.
