MIAMI (WSVN) - As Jamaica faces a catastrophic Category 5 storm, federal budget cuts could make it harder for forecasters to track systems like Hurricane Melissa.
The proposed cuts could halt meteorologists’ progress in providing more and more accurate forecasts for tropical storms and hurricanes like Melissa.
Ginger Zee, chief meteorologist for ABC News, flew with a group of hurricane hunters who collect critical information that powers the weather models that determine when and where these life-threatening storms will hit.
“It’s kind of like an MRI, where you’re going and really getting like a three-dimensional picture inside the storm, and a full scan, basically,” said Andy Hazelton, Associate Scientist at the University of Miami Cooperative Institute for Marine & Atmospheric Studies.
This information, Hazelton said, is critical for all meteorologists. Every single private company, the data that comes to your apps, we all rely on these 3-D scans to help us predict where a storm is headed and how strong it will be, especially ahead of the strongest Category 5 storms.
“Michael, Andrew, Camille — when we get these rapidly intensifying cases that just take off, we’re ready for them, especially when they’re heading toward populated areas,” said Hazelton.
Thanks to scientific research and better data collection, those well-known hurricane cones have been shrinking, and that means fewer errors when predicting the storm. The smaller the cone, the more accurate the predicted path.
Investing in climate research isn’t only about preparing for the next storm. Meteorologists say its about creating a foundation for the years and decades to come.
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