Zeta’s rapid and unexpected strengthening caught a lot of people off guard, going from an expected weak category at landfall in Tuesday forecasts to a near cat three by landfall Wednesday afternoon near Cocodrie.
State Climatologist Barry Keim said the truth is forecasters just aren’t very good at predicting how powerful a system will become.
“Actually predicting the strength of storms, there’s been almost no improvement of that in the last thirty or forty years,” said Keim.
Keim said there was good reason to believe Zeta was going to remain a relatively tame system.
“Given the cooler water and it was expected to hit a bit of wind shear, but this storm just kept churning away and basically did not back down,” said Keim.
Keim said despite missing the call on how strong Zeta would be forecasters did nail the fact that it would make landfall in southeast Louisiana as far back as this weekend when it was in the Caribbean.
“The forecasting is getting better and better over time predicting where the path is going to be and the modeling has gotten better and better at that,” said Keim.
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