Ed Dunham
Former Meteorologist & CFHC Forum Moderator (Ed Passed Away on May 14, 2017)
Reged: Sun
Posts: 2565
Loc: Melbourne, FL
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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
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Storm Cooper
User
Reged: Sat
Posts: 1290
Loc: Panama City , FL
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I'll need to document this one well as it will probably my closest 
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Hurricane Season 2017 13/7/1
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HanKFranK
User
Reged: Mon
Posts: 1841
Loc: Graniteville, SC
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actually ed, that was fun. aside from you though, i didn't see any of our resident degreed mets take the plunge.. would be interesting to see how they stack up against amateur reckoning.
anyhow, ed, you've created a monster. for subsequent systems i'm going to post forum challenges for the 7-day positions of a given storm every few days.. since i can imagine that quite a few people on this board would enjoy it.
HF 0504z14september
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stormchazer
Storm Tracker
Reged: Tue
Posts: 315
Loc: Central Florida
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Honorable mention...I guess the map on the dartboard worked.
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Jara
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