While researchers are working to improve hurricane forecasts, many believe that more lives and property can be saved by being better prepared to face the storms. Witt spoke as top hurricane specialists gathered with emergency management planners and broadcasters to discuss hurricane forecasting and preparedness. The conference was sponsored by the American Meteorological Society and The Weather Channel.
Hurricanes do have inherent predictability.
Hurricane forecasters struggle to predict the path a storm will take, how fast it will move and, perhaps most difficult, how strong it will be. D. James Baker, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, noted that hurricane track forecast error has been reduced over the last few decades. In the 1960s and '70s, forecasters could predict 24 hours ahead of time a hurricane's path within about 100 nautical miles, he said, and now they can predict it within about 80 nautical miles. And 72 hours ahead of time, the error has cut in half, from 400 nautical miles to 200 nautical miles, he said. A nautical mile is 1.15 statute miles.