- [Narrator] Hurricanes are powerful storms.
They can cause damage to property,
and of course, they sometimes cause injuries and deaths.
They're scary for all of these reasons, of course,
but they're also scary
because they're unpredictable.
To help citizens and governments,
meteorologists use statistics to forecast
the strength, size, and path of hurricanes.
But what do these forecasts mean?
How are they developed?
Forecasts are developed using different methodologies.
Meteorologists gather tons of atmospheric data.
To keep this simple,
Model 1 might use four variables
and that data would be used to develop
a forecast with the Model 1 formula.
Model 2 might use six variables,
some similar to Model 1, some different.
This data would be used
in the formula for Model 2.
This is why two different models
might provide two very different forecasts.
Also remember, as with any statistical forecast,
each forecast comes with a level of uncertainty.
Often these results are presented to us
using hurricane cones.
The cone tries to predict the path
of the center of the storm
over the next few hours or days.
The cone gets wider
because the farther into the future we go,
the greater the level of uncertainty.
It's easier to predict what will happen
in the next hour versus what will happen in four days.
Also remember, this cone is predicting
where the center of the storm will be,
so, areas outside the cone
are still in the path of the storm.
In reality, even the areas outside of the cone
could still be within range of the center of the storm.
And based on the National Hurricane Center's process,
the center of the storm has only a 67% probability
of staying within the predicted cone.
So, there's actually a 33% chance the Hurricane Center
could veer outside of the predicted cone.
But there's good news.
Over time, meteorologists are learning.
The models are improving
and thus, the cones are shrinking.
Believe it or not,
the size of the hurricane cones 10 years ago
were much bigger than the cones we see today.
So, next time you see hurricane cones on television,
use your understanding of probability, confidence levels,
and basic forecasting and statistics
to better interpret what you're seeing
and hearing from the meteorologist.