FLHurricane.com: Challenge #1 - Results and Analysis

The official 13/12Z position of Hurricane Isabel was 22.1N 61.0W with an intensity of 130 knots. Most of us didn't do very well but I think that we may have expected that - its not an easy thing to do. Storm Cooper was off by about 130 miles at 22.8N 63.2W (not bad for a one week forecast). Stormchazer gets honorable mention with 20.5N and 64W. We all underplayed the intensity, who would have anticipated a Cat IV/V? The last Cat V was five years ago (Mitch). HankFrank had the intensity at 110 knots.

Everyone was too far to the west, so Why was that? Well I think our expectation was that the storm would eventually be a Cat I or a Cat II and it would move more under the influence of the low to mid level wind. Remember, a strong Atlantic basin high pressure ridge was anticipated at the time, so we figured that those easterly winds along the base of the ridge would move Isabel steadily westward at a decent 15-20kts. In retrospect, the ridge was slow to evolve and the storm quickly became a Cat IV, so the movement now was more under the control of the mid to upper level winds - which were a lot lighter, so Isabel had a slower 8 to 10 knot pace.

Of course the real point that I was making was that this isn't an easy thing to do - not just for 7 days but even for 5 days or 3 days. The release this year of the 5-day outlook had more to do with the refinement of models rather than with the excellent skill at - the has been doing this for quite some time - and yes, there have been failures as well as success - but you still have to make the forecast based on the info at hand.

Thanks to all that participated. It takes a little courage to stick your neck out and I applaud you for that!
Cheers,
ED