The 2007 Outlook - Updated Forecast Results

Update 1/5/08
Well the season had a last minute addition in December with Tropical Storm Olga - and Karen was indeed updated to Hurricane status in post analysis. These adjustments upgraded the season total to 15/6/2, and the margins of error have been corrected in the individual tallies below., as well as the statistics mentioned in the post. With 8 excellent forecasts and 18 good forecasts, this is a significant improvement in forecast skill over previous years. Nice job!!!
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I think that its safe to assume that this hurricane season is over, so its time to recap and see how well you did. The actual season total was 14 named storms, 5 hurricanes and 2 major hurricanes - a significant reduction in the number of hurricanes and major hurricanes from last year. The early season was dominated by a stronger than normal Atlantic ridge that kept the ITCZ and any storms that did manage to develop well to the south. The latter part of the season was dominated by increasing wind shear in the tropics that for the most part only allowed short-lived tropical storms to develop.

Here are your pre-season predictions and the total error:
CSU 17/9/5 -8
TSR 17/9/4 -7
Clark 15/9/5 -6
Ed 14/7/3 -3

MikeC 13/7/4 -5
allan 18/9/6 -10
Myles 15/9/5 -6
sara33 15/5/3 -2 (winner)
BC Francis 13/5/2 -3 (honorable mention)
madmumbler 12/8/4 -7
jojoindian6 13/8/4 -6
Lamar-Plant City 19/8/4 -8
Storm Cooper 11/5/2 -5
VMI Bran 13/7/3 -4
Mad Dog 14/6/3 -2 (winner)
sauki 13/6/3 -3 (honorable mention)
Lois Cane 16/7/4 -4
Ftlaudbob 16/10/5 -8
Met Oc 18/10/4 -9
New Watcher 16/9/6 -8
Hurricane29 16/9/4 -6
Tak 15/8/4 -4
native 19/9/6 -11
doug 16/8/4 -5
HanKFranK 14/8/4 -5
Robert A 17/7/3 -4
HCW 17/10/4 -8
Dem05 16/8/4 -5
Valandil 16/9/4 -6
Nateball 15/7/3 -3 (honorable mention)
Bee-Beep 16/8/4 -5
Bloodstar 22/11/6 -16
John C 11/5/2 -5
Stormchazer 15/8/3 -3 (honorable mention)
DMFischer 18/7/4 -6
weatherwise911 19/10/5 -11
CMD Orlando 19/10/5 -11
Psyber 14/6/3 -2 (winner)
cieldumort 15/9/5 -6
Lysis 20/10/7 -14

The average forecast was 16/8/4 -5 (good), and indicates that many storm trackers will usually forecast a busy season, i.e., the desire to have lots of systems to watch. As an example, for folks on this site only 4 forecasted less than 6 hurricanes, 10 folks forecasted 6 or 7 hurricanes - and 26 forecasted 8 or more hurricanes. There were 12 forecasts of less than 15 named storms, 6 forecasts of 15 named storms and 21 forecasts for more than 15 named storms. There were 9 forecasts that exceeded the CSU and TSR forecasts of 17 named storms, 2 forecasts that equalled the CSU/TSR forecasts and, much to your collective credit, 27 forecasts that were for fewer named storms than the CSU/TSR outlook.

Skill Table
-1 to -3 Excellent (8 forecasts)
-4 to -6 Good (18 forecasts)
-7 to -9 Fair (6 forecasts)
-10 or more (6 forecasts - contact sara33, Mad Dog and/or Psyber for additional training

)

Besides Clark & myself, 36 of you were kind enough to participate in this annual site ritual which is an excellent participation rate and I thank all of you for trying. More important than the numbers themselves are reflections over the season and why a forecast was good or not so good. Who did the worst? Well, none of you. I'd probably give that dubious honor, from a meteorological standpoint, to CSU and their Oct/Nov forecast of 4/2/1. The actual was 1/1/0 (-5 for a two month forecast)

CSU will issue their summary analysis of the 2007 season on November 27th and their initial outlook for the 2008 season in early December - and we'll start the process all over again.
Cheers,
ED

Edited by Ed Dunham (Sat Jan 05 2008 12:24 PM)

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