Wrathful Winds

At 11:00 p.m. on Sept. 29, the National Hurricane Center in Miami posted a prediction for Hurricane Matthew after it started from a tropical wave that was pushed off the African coast on Sept. 28. Using the data collected from a reconnaissance aircraft, meteorologists predicted that the strength of the hurricane would only elevate slightly as time passed, implying that there was no dire necessity to take precautions. The actual results, however, proved them wrong.

Hurricane Matthew took its toll from the Caribbean to the United States. The hurricane was at its greatest intensity from Sept. 30 to Oct. 1 when it first reached the eastern Caribbean at a speed of approximately 160 miles per hour. It proceeded to create landfalls in Haiti and eastern Cuba three days later. The hurricane continued to travel through the Bahamas and came close to the coasts of Florida and Georgia.

Landfalls aside, the effects of flooding near U.S. ports and beaches were no less severe. The hurricane left its mark near Fort Pulaski in Georgia as it set a new record tide level of 12.57 feet above normal low tide. Even though it did not seem to exceed by much the old record of 12.2 feet set by Hurricane David in 1979, the effects were nonetheless devastating. In the afternoon of Oct. 8, the flooding unleashed destruction upon the Springfield pier in Myrtle Beach along with the Jacksonville Beach pier in South Carolina and a section of the Oak Island pier in North Carolina. Meteorologist Kaitlin Wright posted on her Twitter page pictures of what she described as “the basically gone Springfield pier in Myrtle Beach.”

Since the hurricane reached North America and ravaged cities in the United States and nearby countries, American meteorologists have been receiving a tremendous amount of criticism due to the inaccuracy of their predictions of Hurricane Matthew’s rise in intensity. If they had not underestimated the destructive potential of the hurricane, precautions could have been taken to prevent at least some of the damage that was done. Hurricane Matthew caused the most number of deaths in countries around the Caribbean like Haiti where, as reported by the country’s civil protection officials, at least 877 deaths took place. It was also curious to see that after the hurricane, Cuba refused any help offered by U.S. charity organizations. It was the only country that deliberately turned down any assistance the United States offered in an effort to remedy the current conditions. Personally, I find it to be a completely unreasonable action. In a country devastated by a natural disaster, taking care of the people in need of help should be placed as the top priority. It seems that the Cuban government refused assistance simply to spite the United States for its faulty predictions. This is just one example that illustrates how furious the people and government of the devastated countries were. One can almost say that the victims of the hurricane were just as wrathful as the raging winds that tore their societies apart.

It may be time to look back and think about what might have gone wrong. First of all, it’s worth noting that Hurricane Matthew wasn’t the first instance that American meteorologists had underestimated the potential of a hurricane. Last year, Hurricane Patricia, originating near the Gulf of Tehuantepec south of Mexico, went through a similar intensification process as Hurricane Matthew that weather scientists never saw coming. The hurricane’s intensity skyrocketed unexpectedly from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane with winds traveling at about 215 miles per hour. Its strength exceeded that of Matthew, but the areas that it struck were less populated than the regions Hurricane Matthew laid waste to.

To get a better picture of the potential reasons for these inaccurate predictions, we may need to take a closer look at the process meteorologists go through in order to make the predictions in the first place. In order to make a forecast, meteorologists use a weather model, which is a program that runs on a supercomputer. They harvest atmospheric data from weather stations and satellites, and that data is fed to the weather model to generate predictions on temperature and humidity as well as the direction and strength of wind. In that process, the two most common factors that potentially lead to faulty forecasts are flawed or insufficient data and improper methods of data assimilation or calculation. It’s also worth mentioning that in order to generate a prediction, many equations of fluid dynamics, physics and chemistry have to be applied. Due to the complicated nature of the process of data integration, it is fair to say that mistakes are easily made when making a forecast. Lastly, hurricanes are one of the hardest natural disasters to predict. As they usually originate near large bodies of water where there are few weather stations, it’s hard to generate forecasts of hurricanes’ direction of travel and intensity.

I believe that the main problem was not that mistakes were made when predicting Hurricane Matthew’s path and potential. The main problem was that no lessons were taken away from mistakes made prior to Hurricane Matthew. As mentioned before, there were other occasions when the destructive potential of a hurricane was underestimated, but no one seemed to look back and analyze what might have gone wrong. Nobody questioned if the technology needed any enhancements or if their calculation and prediction methods needed any tweaking or improvements. No one questioned the true cause of the faulty predictions. Granted, mistakes happen, but the inability to analyze errors and make changes result in the repetition of the same mistakes.

Being a meteorologist requires hard work, and I admire the effort meteorologists put into their endeavors. Inaccuracies and errors are not uncommon in forecasting weather, but meteorologists should always keep in mind that sometimes a single inaccurate forecast can cause irrevocable damage and devastate the lives of millions of people. Knowing that miscalculations can happen easily and that their consequences can be drastic, meteorologists may want to try and find ways to improve the accuracy of their predictions from this point on.

Some may say that because the nature of hurricanes is extremely unpredictable to begin with, the meteorologists shouldn’t be taking as much blame as they have been. Perhaps it’s a matter of the nature of weather scientists’ line of work and not a matter of their competence. I, personally, do not wish to condemn the meteorologists, and I agree that the unstable and unpredictable nature of these natural disasters is a major factor. Despite that, it’s always good to find areas that can use improvement. It’s also better to overestimate than to underestimate.

Lastly, the anger of the devastated people, in my opinion, is justified, for natural disasters like these are almost always a matter of life and death. However, complaining by itself certainly doesn’t help with the rebuilding of a shattered society. Let’s hope that if these complaints can accomplish anything at all, they can send a message to the weather scientists, informing them that certain changes need to take place to better avoid dire consequences that stem from false predictions.