Will U.S. Hurricane Forecasting Models Catch Up to Europe’s?
A year after Hurricane Sandy, Europe’s forecasting technology is still tops.
Six days before Sandy came ashore one year ago this week—while the storm was still building in the Bahamas—forecasters predicted it would make landfall somewhere between New Jersey and New York City on October 29.
They were right.
Sandy, which had by then weakened from a Category 2 hurricane to an unusually potent Category 1, came ashore just south of Atlantic City, a few miles from where forecasters said it would, on the third to last day of October.
"They were really, really excellent forecasts," said University of Miami meteorologist Brian McNoldy. "We knew a week ahead of time that something awful was going to happen around New York and New Jersey."
That knowledge gave emergency management officials in the Northeast plenty of
