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A recent
poll finds that fewer than half of coastal residents are
prepared
"It takes just one hurricane over your
house to make for a bad year," says Max Mayfield,
director of the National Hurricane Center. He and his
colleagues are placing an extremely high emphasis on
individual preparedness, which means being able to take
care of one's family unassisted for at least 72
hours.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0523/p02s02-ussc.html
Active hurricane season forecast, but who listens?
A recent poll finds that fewer than half of coastal
residents are prepared.
By Peter N. Spotts Staff writer of The Christian Science
Monitor
Seaside residents from New England to Texas can't say
they haven't been alerted. Four groups, including the US
government, are calling for a hurricane season far more
active than average - although no group currently expects
as many storms as last year's record-setting 27. At least
two groups are attempting to estimate the likelihood that
specific segments of the US coastline will feel the brunt
of some of these storms - a far more difficult prediction
to make.
Yet for all the time and effort researchers have put into
developing these outlooks, some evidence suggests that
they might do just as well by telling coastal residents
to be prepared no matter where they live. Too often,
those warnings go unheeded, a recent poll suggests.
"It takes just one hurricane over your house to make for
a bad year," says Max Mayfield, director of the National
Hurricane Center. He and his colleagues are placing an
extremely high emphasis on individual preparedness, which
means being able to take care of one's family unassisted
for at least 72 hours.
Still, efforts to warn residents, emergency planners, and
industry are worth it, maintains Gerald Bell, who heads
up the effort at the National Weather Service's Climate
Prediction Center. Hurricanes remain the country's most
costly natural hazard year in and year out. "If you're
going to have an active season, people need to know
that," he says. These are highly confident
forecasts."
At a briefing in Miami Monday, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) spelled out its initial
forecast for the season, which will be updated in August,
on the eve of the season's peak period. It expects 13 to
16 named tropical storms this season, with eight to 10 of
those becoming hurricanes. Of those hurricanes, four to
six will be intense hurricanes registering Category 3 or
above.
That's on par with the forecast from Tropical Storm Risk,
based in Britain, which is calling for 14.6 tropical
storms during the Atlantic season. Of those, it expects
7.9 to become hurricanes and 3.6 to reach at least
Category 3. In April, the hurricane forecast group at
Colorado State University estimated that the season would
yield 17 tropical storms, leading to nine hurricanes,
five of them intense.
Explanations for the high level of storm activity -
particularly what some researchers see as an increase in
the proportion of strong storms - are mired in a
controversy over whether the increased activity in the
Atlantic is the result of natural climate variations or
global warming.
In NOAA's forecasts, for example, a feature dubbed the
Atlantic multidecadal oscillation plays a key role. This
is thought to be manifest as a 20- to 40-year (or by some
accounts 50- to 80-year) swing in ocean and atmospheric
conditions in the North Atlantic. Currently, the North
Atlantic is said to be in a warm phase. Warm ocean
temperatures fuel hurricanes. Thus, its advocates hold,
the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation currently is
driving any increased punch.
Others, however, including researchers at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Georgia Tech,
hold that the increased proportion of strong storms could
well be driven by global warming's heating effect on the
oceans in the tropical Atlantic, where hurricanes
form.
Yet for all the improvements that have been made in
seasonal forecasts, they can be unintentionally
misleading, notes Kerry Emanuel, a hurricane researcher
at MIT. He points to the 1992 season, which was forecast
as a season with lower-than- normal activity. Then
hurricane Andrew slammed into south Florida.
This has led some forecasters, such as the group at
Colorado State and AccuWeather Inc., to attempt landfall
forecasts. Comparing today's preseason climate patterns
with those of past active years, AccuWeather expects that
six tropical cyclones will hit US coasts. Of those, the
company expects five to be hurricanes and three to arrive
as major hurricanes. As the season progresses, the risk
shifts from the Gulf Coast to the Eastern seaboard up
through New England, the company holds. The Colorado
State group sees a 79 percent likelihood that at least
one hurricane will strike the Gulf Coast; the figure is
89 percent for Florida and the East Coast.
But if seasonal forecasting is in its infancy compared
with storm-specific forecasts, landfall forecasts are
hardly out of the delivery room.
Trying to develop meaningful landfall outlook this far in
advance is difficult because storms are driven by local
and regional conditions that occur on time scales too
short to forecast this far in advance, Dr. Bell notes.
"Different combinations of conditions can produce an
active season," and those combinations can impose
different effects on weather conditions over the eastern
US and the western Atlantic that govern storm
tracks."
It's not at all
clear that coastal residents are paying that much
attention. After more than 20 years of seasonal forecasts
for Atlantic hurricanes from one group and nearly 10
years' worth from others, a recent survey suggests too
many residents in hurricane-prone areas aren't taking the
basic steps that emergency-management experts recommend.
For example, fewer than half of Gulf and Atlantic coast
residents have a family-response plan or a hurricane
"survival kit," according to a poll of 1,100 Americans
for the National Hurricane Survival Initiative. At least
a third lack adequate insurance.
If residents don't always take heed, insurance companies
do, notes Dave Unnewehr, an official with the American
Insurance Association in Washington. These forecasts can
play roles in individual company decisions about coverage
in hurricane-prone areas as well as in how much
reinsurance companies may want to buy to protect them
against excessive losses.
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