Q&A – Is NOAA The Most Accurate Hurricane Season Forecaster?

Since the onset of hurricane season forecasting, which began in 1998 with NOAA, NOAA’s accuracy rate (meaning that overall activity landed somewhere within the provided range in each category) has been 53%.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:21):
Noah the most accurate hurricane season forecaster. This is brought
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(00:42):
Just go to WJNO or via Patriot inside of the
iHeartRadio app. We would love it if you would make
us a number one pre set on once you get there.
At least I would. Joel looks ambivalent about the whole situation.
He looked at me as kind of have this stare

(01:03):
in his face, like, no, I like that. I could
take her to leave it. I would love it, though, Joel.
Joel's Jill and I would especially love it if you
made the Brian Mudjow podcast my podcast, you're number two
preset that way, We're always there for you for free
on demand. Everybody, even Joel wins in that scenario. And

(01:25):
as we take a look at you know what you
can do inside the app. Look for the little microphone
button as well. You see it, you tap it, you
may lay out a message right there, maybe for a
future at Q and I. Today's note is this, Brian.
Many of us have our preferred weather forecasters and favorite meteorologists. However,
that doesn't seem to be the case with hurricane season forecasting.

(01:45):
I'm speaking for myself, but also conversationally. When I brought
this up with friends, no one had any forecasting that
stood out to them. My question is this all the
hurricane season forecasters? Is Noah's Alec typically the most accurate?
If not, do you have a favorite? So yeah, it's
an interesting question. As always, got two sides of stories,

(02:07):
one side of fact. So for me, my preference in
hurricane forecasting comes down to two things. One accuracy, two
the way the forecasting is communicated. You know, the accuracy
piece that speaks for itself, but the way stuff is
communicated is a big deal to me as well, because
if you've heard me cover hurricanes storm activity over the years.

(02:31):
One thing you no doubt had picked up on is
that I have very little tolerance for what I consider
to be a weather hype. And one of the things
that I appreciate greatly about CBS well has Lauren Aleski
is she's like the anti weather hype meteorologist. There are
a lot of good ones there, but in particular, I mean,
she stands out that way. When you talk about people

(02:54):
agencies that will play with people's emotions, I just find
that to be wrong and at times even offensive. And
one of the most egregious examples of this I can
recall in my twenty seven years covering hurricanes what happened
when ACU weather released their preseason forecast last year. You
might recall that they characterized the upcoming season as quote

(03:18):
unquote explosive, and that kind of characterization is just completely
uncalled for, because all it does is that it preys
on the nerves of people, which isn't constructive. Nothing good
comes of that. What's more is that ACU Weather's quoteunquote
explosive hurricane season forecasts was a massive bust last year.
Total activity came in well below the lowest end of

(03:40):
their projected activity range. So anyway, that takes us to
the overall question of accuracy since the onset of hurricane
season forecasting, which began in nineteen ninety eight. With Noah,
Noah's accuracy rate, what would you think it? It would
be overall activity, and this is defined as overall activity

(04:04):
that lands somewhere within the projected range in each of
the categories. Joel, you seem to have a pretty good
rate on this. Yeah, I'm just somewhere around maybe forty
five percent. Yeah, you're thinking somewhere the neighborhood of a
coin flip or so, and it's about right. So, Noah,
going back to ninety eight, which by the way, I

(04:25):
wasn't aware of that until I looked this up that
I knew it was more recent than not. But it's
you know, they've only been doing it actually for for
twenty seven years at this point a preseason forecast. But
their accuracy level has been fifty three percent since the onset,
So it is statistically better than the coin flip, but
only barely so. However, one thing we have seen in

(04:48):
recent years is that it's been improving. Technology has been improving,
that's been helping the forecasting to a certain extent of
the annual providers of preseason hurricane forecasting. So to kind
of like hit at the accuracy question. Here, you have
ACU weather, you have Colorado State University, you have Noah
and the Weather Channel. No single forecast is just definitively

(05:12):
the most accurate you're in and year out. However, there
have been consistent themes. So to give you an idea
of a breakout the five most recent years. Taking a
look at the performance of the five most recent hurricane seasons,
ACCU Weather's preseason forecast has overestimated two times and underestimated

(05:37):
three years. So ACCU weather has had no accurate years
of the past five. The irony of that because they're
called ACU weather, which I assume means the Acus for accurate.
Well that's the idea of They're not alone though, I
mean Colorado State University. A lot of people put a
lot of weight in that CSU. They've done no better

(05:59):
over the past five two overestimated, three underestimated, also no
accurate years, and they also happen to miss in the
exact same way in the exact same years, So you
know there's slight variations in their forecasting, but pretty much
the same and wrong similarly. And they're not alone because
the Weather Channel of the past five overestimated twice, underestimated

(06:24):
three times, no accurate years. You know, it's a trend. ACU,
other CSU, Weather Channel, I've all missed in the same direction,
and not one of them has has just nailed it
in any of the last five. Now when it comes
to Noah, we've got a different story. Noah has had
two accurate years and three that the underestimated, so there

(06:49):
is a big difference there. And through this exercise we
see that Noah isn't only the most accurate of the
hurricane forecasters, but is actually the only forecasting service. So
I've even gotten a single accurate preseason forecast within the
past five and they've done it twice. The other three
services pretty much exactly tracking with one another with only

(07:11):
slide variations. But if we were going to play like
the Horseshoes or hand Grenades game, like you give points
for getting closest of the wrong ones Weather Channel, Weather
Channel would be the most accurate in the past five
years of the other three services. Clearly Noah's forecasting has
been the best in recent years, and actually last year's

(07:34):
forecast was the best they had ever put out. Not
only were all aspects lining up within their range, everything
lined up in the midpoint of their range, meaning that
if they just put out, hey, it's going to be
x number of namestorms, X number of hurricanes, x number
of major hurricanes, it would have been right there at
the midpoint. Each way they had been exactly right. So

(07:56):
that kind of washes with their technological improvements that they
keep telling us is resulting in better forecasting. And four
twenty twenty five just reminder that Noah is predicting thirteen
to nineteen named storm, six to ten hurricanes, three to
five majors, and they provide a seventy percent confidence reading
in that forecasting. So that is a bit better than

(08:20):
much of what we've seen in recent years, just slightly
above active