Irene vs. Isaac
By Zachary Duhaime on August 21, 2012, 10:22pm
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Same letter and same forecast...
As a weather watcher, there are many things that we look at to forecast weather events. The most common forecast tools we use are “models” like the GFS (the American model) and the ECMWF (the European model). But when forecasting tropical systems, there are a lot of different things that we look at including the “Spaghetti plots”, the usual models and where the low and high pressure systems will set up. The high/low pressure systems are what steer tropical systems and just a slight shift in one of them can make the biggest changes. With that said, the picture to the left was the five day forecast for Hurricane Irene and the one to the right… Tropical Storm Isaac. So what’s the big deal? Well, theses pictures are NOT of the same storm though they look almost identical! Both of the storm’s five day forecast path has Isaac plotted in almost the exact stop as Irene was. The biggest difference is after that forecast path came out, there was a huge shift in the track which set the stage for us in New England to become worried. At the present time, a huge shift has not yet occurred and there is no need to panic at this point. Just pointing out how similar these storms are at the same spot and time just one year ago. So the best thing to do is stay with Wxedge.com, News8 and my twitter page (@zduhaimedmj) for the latest on Isaac!
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