FLHurricane.com: NHC leaves same track maps for 2005 season

As Lysis put it, the problem isn't so much the charts that are out there as it is educating the general public.

Everyone's natural tendency is to focus on the exact projected track -- the center line -- and say *that* is where the storm is going. However, as we know, the effects of a hurricane are far-reaching. The right side of a storm is generally the most intense; even a storm moving into Tampa would've affected all of South Florida to a large degree -- as projected by them being under a hurricane warning! How to overcome this with the general public is a matter up for debate.

The media does not help in educating the public, nor do those out there who think "well, we haven't seen a hurricane in 20 years, we're pretty much immune." The media has the tendency to narrow in on the projected path, not the watch & warning area, and use whatever is necessary to pump up ratings, even if that means using a particular computer model's track that isn't near the best. Obviously, this does not hold for the entire media; it is a case of a few bad apples spoiling the bunch. However, there's no excuse for the media and public to be thinking that South & inland Central Florida are immune from a hit by a storm because the center of the storm is projected to make landfall in Tampa (yet the potential swath extends from Tallahassee to Key West)! It's even worse to blame the NHC for their shortcomings. Yes, education on the part of the NHC does need to get better; however, if private companies try to meddle with something that isn't terribly broken, it just makes things worse. I can think of one such prominent company (which I won't mention, but many of you can probably figure) which fits this bill.

This post has sort of rambled on, but the explanation for why the voting came out like it did is pretty simple: the majority of those who voted are likely in the field itself or are weather enthusiasts. They are the ones who know the most about the effects of the storms, on the whole, and feel that changing things isn't the solution. Instead, education is the answer...now it's a matter of figuring out how to go about educating the public.

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