How far in advance?

[SusieQusie]

Probably a silly question, but:

 

How far in advance can they usually predict a hurricane? In other words, if there's no hint of anything a week before your cruise, can you start to feel secure? Or do these things just "form" really quickly with not too much time for early warning?

[*Mach*]

The National Hurricane Center can begin tracking potential hot spots a week or more in advance, depending on the genesis. Storms that are born off the west coast of Africa give plenty of warning but systems that pop up in the Gulf or near the windward islands can take you by surprise.

 

I'd forget the entire thing, hop on the boat and have a great time. After all, what can we do about the weather????

 

:rolleyes:

[Carolinamamasita]

The National Hurricane Center can begin tracking potential hot spots a week or more in advance, depending on the genesis. Storms that are born off the west coast of Africa give plenty of warning but systems that pop up in the Gulf or near the windward islands can take you by surprise.

 

I'd forget the entire thing, hop on the boat and have a great time. After all, what can we do about the weather????

 

:rolleyes:

 

I just wanted to say that I love your countdown clocks...

I have been trying for weeks to get that page to work for me ... with no LUCK ...

whats the trick ? LOL

[*Mach*]

I had to edit the HTML code a bit to eliminate some of the stuff that the board doesn't seem to like.

 

My first few attempts to get the clocks up failed miserably until I looked closely at the code.

 

One member on the Carnival board said that my clocks locked up her browser. That's the only complaint I've had so I suspect it's her settings.

 

:o

 

Are you using POQbum? If so, email me the code that you copied and I'll tweak it for you. Send it to cruise_critter@sbcglobal.net

[Keith1010]

While they can track hurricanes very far into the future, they still can't pinpoint precisely the track of the storm, even a few hours before it hits land.

 

Keith

[*Mach*]

Not to diminish the importance of weather forecasters but the majority of the time they can't get the weather right for the next 24 hours. How can they possibly predict what a system as complex and powerful as a hurricane will do a week or ten days out?

 

Certainly, computer models using the motions of past storms provide some relative degree of accuracy but it's still limited, at best.

 

As I've said many times here, an educated guess is still a guess and, in reality, that's what forecasting the weather is... lots of science and lots of educated guessing.