Major Hurricane Milton

[GaWx]

3 minutes ago, bluewave said:

I have noticed that the model forecasts which the official forecasts are based on have had too much of a left of track bias with the major hurricanes near the Southwest and Central Florida Gulf coast in recent years. Not sure if this is somehow related to frictional effects of the hurricane circulation encountering the FL west Coast or another factor? In any event, this has worked out for Tampa Bay since they never want to see the RFQ of a major hurricane landfall. So the storm was about 25-30 miles to the right of some of the earlier forecasts. Ian and Irma followed a similar forecast evolution pattern but were a little further right. Perhaps related to the longer land interaction?

 

 

 

Maybe the model average but definitely not all of the major globals had a too far left bias with these three. This was especially the case with UKMET. UKMET was:

-best with Ian with it near actual landfall point well to the SE several days in advance. I documented this in detail in the Ian thread for future reference. The GFS and CMC were horrible with them way too far left, including some Panhandle landfalls just a couple of days out! Euro was also too far left but not by nearly as much. Icon was 2nd best to UKMET with a smaller too far left miss overall.

- UKMET a good bit too far right for Milton (along with the CMC) a few days in advance. GFS overall missed too far left about the most of the globals. I need to go back and analyze more closely but my gut feel is that Euro may have done best overall with perhaps Icon in 2nd

- UKMET and Euro did well overall with Irma in advance, better than GFS, as I clearly recall

[bluewave]

7 minutes ago, GaWx said:

Maybe the model average but definitely not all of the major globals had a too far left bias with these three. This was especially the case with UKMET. UKMET was:

-best with Ian with it near actual landfall point well to the SE several days in advance. I documented this in detail in the Ian thread for future reference. The GFS and CMC were horrible with them way too far left, including some Panhandle landfalls just a couple of days out! Euro was also too far left but not by nearly as much. Icon was 2nd best to UKMET with a smaller too far left miss overall.

- UKMET a good bit too far right for Milton (along with the CMC) a few days in advance. GFS overall missed too far left about the most of the globals. I need to go back and analyze more closely but my gut feel is that Euro may have done best overall with perhaps Icon in 2nd

- UKMET and Euro did well overall with Irma in advance, better than GFS, as I clearly recall

We saw the same left of track averaged model forecast bias at play with Hurricane Charley in 2004. It was originally forecast to come closer to Tampa Bay. Some of the models had more of a bias than others as you mentioned.

 

https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2024/

 

[wdrag]

Commenting on modeling and verification:  

NHC verification of sustained wind fields may be biased slightly high (ONLY my opinion). That was what I was seeing when still in NWS at PHL-BOS (ret 2018)... and I think then it was in flight assessment that seemed to expand the wind field slightly.  

 

Regarding wind GUSTS for Milton:  I tend to like the ECMWF and EPS (6 hr max wind gust ) seen on Pivotal Weather.  These are a nice ballpark (for me) of what to expect... you can also ee the hourlies of the max gusts GFS/CMC etc.  The HRRR was terribly low at 36-48 hours and I wasn't impressed with the RAP.  

 

Others may disagree, but what I like to do is remember advance notice max wind gusts (D1-5) and place my concerns in perspective with respect to different date storms, and then within the context of same event modeling. I, again my bias,  but I thought the EC op for both Helene and Milton were pretty good... especially Milton picking up on DAB max wind gusts.

SPC HREF did a nice job on mean and max rainfall. from 00z/9. Atached the 00z/9 48 hr MAX rainfall axis prediction, and the reality CoCoRaHs numbers (without the 18" St Pete official report). CoCoRaHs numbers are official for NWS use. 

[bdgwx]

The AccuWeather damage estimate for Milton is $160-180 billion.

The revised damage estimate for Helene is $225-250 billion.

https://www.accuweather.com/en/hurricane/hurricane-milton-by-the-numbers-an-ef3-tornado-and-blowout-tide/1702670

[dan11295]

Just now, bdgwx said:

The AccuWeather damage estimate for Milton is $160 billion.

The revised damage estimate for Helene is $225 billion.

https://www.accuweather.com/en/hurricane/hurricane-milton-by-the-numbers-an-ef3-tornado-and-blowout-tide/1702670

Just to be clear those are economic loss estimates and not just actual estimated insured or insured+uninsured damages.

[bdgwx]

Correct. As point of comparison Ian 2022 was $180-210 billion, Harvey 2017 was $190 billion, and Katrina 2005 was $320 billion.