Beyond Sharpie

Hurricane Dorian has come and gone, but has also left lessons behind. The most obvious one is about climate change, suggesting that it is to blame for the increasing potency of such storms. But there’s another one. Computers are great forecasting tools, but just because we see a path on a map doesn’t mean a storm is going to follow it.

The President soooo wanted that Sharpie-assisted cone on his  map to include Alabama so that he could be right. But as we look now at the path Dorian actually followed, being right was not easy.

Dorian started in the eastern Caribbean as a tropical storm and originally wasn’t supposed to amount to much, as I recall. Then it grew and threatened Puerto Rico, but struck only a glancing blow, compared to what was to come. It continued to grow and seemed to be heading straight for a major impact on Florida, on the way inflicting Biblical-level damage on two Bahamian islands. There, it put on the brakes, changed direction enough to curve away from Florida, then headed up the Southeast coast, following its curvature with unusual precision, close enough to mess up one coastal city after another, only making landfall on the extreme eastern end of North Carolina, But it wasn’t done yet as it raced northeast. Even Atlantic Canada, was hit with Category 2 winds.

If we like, we can fault the weather scientists for not doing a better job with all their spaghetti-line projections. But those same scientists are the first to remind us that while forecasting has made tremendous strides over the years through satellite and computer technology, it’s far from perfect. They do get the path right most of the time, but then there’s a Dorian. Maybe it’s God trying to remind us who’s in charge.

Many years ago I was an intern at a major-market television station that included a weather segment in its evening news. No fancy graphics then: the TV weatherman drew lines on a regional map with a black Magic Marker (Sharpies had not been invented yet). During the 6 o’clock news, the weather guy would draw a big circle around our city, saying “Let’s get oriented,” then did his forecast.

After the show, he went out  to dinner, a meal at which he was known to consume more than a few adult beverages. But he still had an 11 p.m. show to do. When the time came, he again said, “Let’s get oriented,” and drew on the map. By then, it was not always a circle, and not always around our city. We were lucky if he was even in the ballpark. So let’s cut our current weather folks a little slack. We have indeed come a long way, baby.