You ask good questions

However, I don't think the forecasters are the ones that make the decisions about evacuations, or for that matter, even recommending evacuations. What they do provide is educated guesses based upon their experience and all of the available data they have about the situation, including of course, Quicksat. Now, politicians and other officials make the decisions based upon those forecasts (read: guesses) and as you saw with Katrina, and the Keys with other recent storms, the decisions to evacuate or not are very political and often come too late to be as effective as they should be for orderly and safe implementation. These decisions are often made by people that see the 'line' in the forecast map and don't read the caveat the forecasters give about the 'cone of uncertainty'. Now, if that 'line' is suddenly 'off by 16%' (and I don't know where that number came from but it seems reasonable given the importance of the data Quicksat provides), I can see the critical decisions being further delayed or rationalized (don't evacuate; it is expensive and besides, it is off by 16% so it will miss us anyhow). In other words, IHMO, the loss of *any* tool will make the hard fought gains in forecasting accuracy a very uphill battle. Just don't make the mistake that the forecasters are the ones deciding whether or not to evacuate, they have enough problems trying to determine where the beast is likely to go.....or so it seems to me.