‘TIS THE SEASON FOR HURRICANE FAKE NEWS… We’re on Day 1 of the Atlantic Hurricane Season and I’m already seeing model images like the one below tossed around on message boards and social media. Weather models are great until images two weeks out are tossed around and posted without context. Let me be abundantly clear in saying the image/solution depicted below has absolutely no value right now. The “phantom tropical storms and hurricanes” have been a staple of the GFS model in years past and this year looks to be no exception. There is absolutely NO threat of hurricane striking the northern Gulf Coast right now. None in sight. A few more thoughts…
HYPERBOLE ALERT… This is the age of information on social media, some good, some bad, and some absolutely outlandish. Wild, pre-hurricane season nonsense really is and will be running rampant over the next few weeks. The analogy I like to point to remains the same… Just because a person has a car (forecast model runs directly off the Internet) doesn’t mean they know how to drive it (make a real hurricane forecast).
CONTEXT NEEDED… The image you see attached to this post is one screenshot of the Global Forecast System (GFS) from one of the model runs a few hours ago. We get new data from the GFS four times per day, and often in the long term (7+ days from the model run initiation), the data varies considerably. This model run happens to be from today showing the data valid for Saturday, June 15, a whopping *14* days out! Could this scenario happen? Sure, but the odds at this point of a major storm are just not there. What really bothers me about images being circulated like this with no real context is that vast majority of folks don’t have a clue they’re looking at one idea (one run) from one model. It’s VITAL to look at many models, each day. The fact is — some models do “better” than others for certain places on a day-to-day weather basis, but there are disparities and other local factors that a meteorologist must take into account when making a forecast. One model image versus a true forecast are two very different things. If you see a wildly inaccurate model post like this being circulated, take it with a BIG dose of skepticism. “Friends don’t let friends share fake news.”
TROPICAL STORM POSSIBLE IN *SOUTHERN* GULF… The National Hurricane Center says there is a 60% chance that a tropical storm may form in the far southern Gulf of Mexico, aka the Bay of Campeche, over the next few days. Regardless of formal development, this system will likely move inland into Mexico and drop tremendous amounts of rain. Little to no local direct impacts are expected, regardless of if development occurs.
GET THE APP… I’ll have more details about your local forecast and tropical updates throughout the hurricane season (starts today) in the all-new, version 2.5 of the RedZone Weather app. If you haven’t already downloaded our free app, redzoneweather.com/app is the link to get it. Once you download it, be sure to visit the Alerts tab (bottom right corner) and tap that large, yellow “Alert Settings” button to set up the push notification alerts you’d like to receive from me.
Have a great evening!