My recent blog on a “heads up for Houston’s hurricane season” has gotten a lot of traction the last couple of days (200,000 hits) and so I felt compelled to look at just how well Dale Link’s forecasts have been for our area over the last 23 years. You’ll recall that Dale doesn’t forecast HOW MANY hurricanes we may have, like everyone else, but rather WHERE THEY GO.
That, ultimately, is the real question, isn’t it?
His forecast for 2024 includes Texas and Florida:
Dale’s RED ZONES have a 50/50 chance of a tropical cyclone passing through them. And this isn’t just a 50-50 “might happen, might not” kind of guess. Keep in mind, every spot in the Gulf of Mexico has an approximate 2% chance each year of a tropical cyclone strike, that is the statistical average. So to jump from the 2% mainstay to a 50% chance is significant. That’s a “watch out” warning!
Dale claims an 81% accuracy rate for the past 23 years with these zones in the Atlantic basin. So I looked at each year to see if Southeast Texas was in the red zone and just what happened. I want to determine my own success rate for these forecasts. Here’s the table I made showing the Year, whether or not we were in the Red Zone, whether we got a strike and the storm:
Success rate here can be a bit arguable. For instance, we were NOT in the red zone in 2005 and we did not have any strike but we all remember Hurricane RITA which came very close while in 2007 we had no red zone but were scraped by Humberto (the storm affected High Island as it moved eventually into Jefferson County). In 2012, we were IN the red zone with no strike but the same zone covered Louisiana which got Hurricane Isaac (so I think that counts as a hit). In 2015 Dale had NO hurricane strikes in for the whole US and was correct although we did have Tropical Storm Bill hit us in mid-June. And 2017, was a big miss year with Harvey striking (and Irma and Nate were also missed that year). Finally, in 2019 TS Imelda formed on shore so it’s hard to know if that is a miss or not (we weren’t in the red zone)--regardless, more than three feet of rain fall from Winnie to Beaumont!
Given all that, I count 2007′s Humberto as a miss, 2015′s Bill as a miss, 2017′s Harvey as a miss, 2019′s Imelda as a miss. No red zone but a strike. On the other hand, the times we were in the red zone and were hit: 8 hits out of 12 years. Accuracy rate: 75%...about the same accuracy as a 7 day forecast!
RELATED: How accurate are those long range forecasts?
Anthony put together an excellent article yesterday on another early forecast for a busy hurricane season from Joe Bastardi of WeatherBELL.
SEE HERE: Hurricane Season from Hell forecast for Houston
The good news? It’s the weekend and after an onslaught of rain this morning we’re ready for a dry spell. More rain coming Monday so get ready for that!
Frank
Email me with questions and comments!