Subtropical Storm Olga is making landfall in the Dominican Republic, and will soon fall apart over the mountains there. Alan Sullivan is unimpressed: “This indignity is a fitting close to the 2007 season. Olga did not properly earn a name.” Regardless, major flash flooding is possible.

Subtropical Storm Olga has formed.

UPDATE: Alan Sullivan writes: “At this time the radar display shows violent, twisting thunderstorms, but no distinct core. Olga’s inner circulation seems to consist of multiple, orbiting swirls. Central pressure is dropping, however, and if a more distinct core forms, modest intensification could occur. Upper winds remain adverse for the development of a full-blown hurricane.”

The first full advisory is here. Discussion here.

In what would be a surprise ending to the just-about-average 2007 hurricane season — which officially “ended” on November 30, not that Mother Nature cares about such artificial, human-imposed deadlines — a tropical or subtropical storm may form in the Atlantic several hundred miles east of Puerto Rico over the next few days. The National Hurricane Center has issued two Special Tropical Disturbance Statements on the system today, and Glenn Reynolds actually tipped me off via e-mail to an AP article about it. (That’s a first. Heh.)

Alan Sullivan, usually a skeptic when it comes to weakling storms, breathes nary a word about “count-padding” and states that “there is more and more model consensus that a tropical storm may form” out of what is currently being called Invest 94. By contrast, Dr. Jeff Masters is more skeptical, concluding, “I don’t expect 94L will ever develop into a tropical storm.” We shall see. If 94L does develop into a named storm, its name would be Olga.

Meanwhile, Dr. William Gray has issued his first long-range forecast for the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season, in which he calls for a moderately above-average season. Of course, as I’ve stated repeatedly — most recently in an Instalanched November 26 post — I think these forecasts do more harm than good because of their inaccuracy, the public misconceptions they inevitably create, and the charged atmosphere created by the politicization of weather that has taken hold in recent years. As Dr. Masters writes:

[Public scorn of these forecasts is] the inevitable result of a culture where seasonal hurricane forecasts, which are not very good, are excessively hyped by both the forecasters and the media. The forecasters have set them selves up for such shrill condemnations by putting out these very public forecasts, complete with press conferences, but not properly emphasizing the uncertainties and low skill of their forecasts.

To their credit, Dr. Gray & co. have tried to emphasize that point this year, stating in the abstract of their report: “These real-time operational early December forecasts have not shown forecast skill over climatology during the period 1992-2007.” In other words, they have no track record of success in meaningfully predicting anything. Dr. Masters writes, “By clearly stating their lack of forecast skill, the CSU team’s December 2007 forecast is a great step towards improving this situation. The public needs to know that these December forecasts as yet have no skill, and are unworthy of the media attention they get.” Indeed. Take note, MSM. (Eric Berger has a good post on this issue, too.)

An odd analogy occurred to me yesterday, one that links two of my great passions: hurricanes and college football. The analogy is this: in a way, the 2007 college-football season reminds me of the 2005 hurricane season. Both featured a series of absolutely extraordinary events, one after another after another — each of which seemed so improbable as to be almost impossible, and yet no matter how unlikely, they just kept happening. Each event would have been incredible by itself; in combination with all the others, they got to the point of defying all adjectival description. All you could really do is sit back and say, "Wow." At some point, you just had to concede that this season simply didn’t follow the rules.

Seven named storms in June and July. A Category 4 and a Category 5 hurricane in July. Four Cat. 5s during the course of the season, including three of the six most intense Atlantic hurricanes ever recorded — all in the space of seven weeks. A monster hurricane threatening Houston three weeks after another monster hurricane destroyed New Orleans. A two-mile-wide pinhole eye rotating around the edge of a 40-mile-wide outer eye. A tropical storm making landfall in Spain. A cold-water hurricane that seemed to defy the laws of thermodynamics. A grand total of 28 storms, shattering the old record and pushing us into the Greek alphabet by mid-October. Two Greek-alphabet hurricanes, one of them a major hurricane. The season’s final storm forming on December 30 and lasting until January 6.

Appalachian State winning at Michigan. Syracuse, a 37-point underdog, winning at Louisville. Stanford, a 41-point underdog, winning at USC. Navy beating Notre Dame. Thirteen Top 5 teams losing to unranked teams. The #1 and #2 teams both losing in the same weekend three separate times — including both of the last two weekends of the regular season. Ohio State twice rising from #3 to #1 as a result of those double-upset weekends. LSU twice losing while ranked #1, yet still finishing the regular season ranked #2. West Virginia choking away a national-title shot at home, at night, against 4-7 Pitt, a 28-point underdog. UConn a co-champion in the Big East. Buffalo a co-champion in the MAC East. Kansas and Missouri, national-championship contenders. South Florida, briefly ranked #2 in the land. Notre Dame going 3-9. Illinois going to the Rose Bowl. Hawaii going to the BCS. Cal going from the nation’s unofficial #1 team for a few hours to 6-6 seven weeks later. Oregon, similarly, going from 8-1 and #2 in the nation to 8-4 and unranked. Nebraska giving up 76 points to Kansas one week, dropping 73 on Kansas State the following week, and losing 65-51 in its finale. North Texas 49, Navy 45… at halftime. The Play II. A hyperactive coaching carousel, complete with SEC coach-swapping (kinky!). Les Miles going, in the space of 12 hours, from allegedly leaving LSU for Michigan to unexpectedly leading LSU to the BCS title game. An Ohio State team that many suspected of being fraudulent even when it was undefeated, losing at home to an unranked team in Week 11, falling to #7, rebounding to #5 with a win in Week 12, then rising all the way back to #1 by the end of Week 14 without playing a game. LSU climbing from #7 in the second-to-last BCS standings to #2 in the final standings — and going to the championship game as a two-loss team. A sophomore, playing for a three-loss team, about to win the Heisman. And did I mention USC lost to Stanford? At the Coliseum? And that they’d be in the BCS title game if they’d won?

What a year. Truly unbelievable.

P.S. Also yesterday, I thought of an argument for why, even after USC-Stanford, Louisville-Syracuse, and WVU-Pitt, Appalachian State over Michigan is still the biggest upset of the year, and for that matter, of all time.

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The Miami Herald has an excellent article about the third consecutive high-profile failure of seasonal hurricane forecasts to closely approximate reality. (The forecasted storm totals were way too low in 2005, way too high in 2006, and substantially too high in 2007.) The article focuses, quite rightly IMHO, on the fear that these forecasting failures are lowering the public’s confidence in the much more important — and much more accurate — operational forecasts regarding individual storms that the National Hurricane Center does such an excellent job with. I talked about this issue in my season wrap-up for Pajamas Media, and the Herald keys on it as well. Excerpt:

[G]iven the errors — which can undermine faith in the entire hurricane warning system — are these full-season forecasts doing more harm than good? [Yes. -ed.]

”The seasonal hurricane forecasters certainly have a lot of explaining to do,” said Max Mayfield, former director of the National Hurricane Center. …

Mayfield and virtually all hurricane researchers and forecasters, some of whom were skeptical years ago, now support the issuing of full-season predictions. [Why?? -ed.]

But many openly share concerns about the current system, focusing in particular on NOAA’s tendency to subtly link the National Hurricane Center in West Miami-Dade County to the seasonal forecasts produced by [Gerry Bell, NOAA’s lead seasonal forecaster]’s team, which is based in Maryland.

In fact, it is important to emphasize the distinction between the six-month seasonal forecasts and the real-time forecasts of an actual hurricane or other tropical system, which are called "operational forecasts.” …

Many [operational forecasters] worry … that substantial errors in those full-season predictions can undermine faith in their generally accurate forecasts of actual storms.

They note that NOAA, parent agency of the hurricane center and Bell’s team, often releases Bell’s predictions during pre-season news conferences conducted at the hurricane center.

During other years, the hurricane center’s director is ordered to participate in the pre-season news conference, wherever it might be held.

”NOAA has been using the good name of the National Hurricane Center, at least to some extent, to help promote the seasonal product and that’s not the mission of operational hurricane forecasters,” Mayfield said.

”In some areas, hurricane forecasters are losing credibility even though they are not the lead on this — and that’s always a concern,” he said. "We don’t want the credit for the seasonal forecasts.”

Bell said the differences between the two groups should be clear to the public by now. He said South Floridians and other residents of the hurricane zone should never disregard real-time forecasts, especially based on a misconception about the full-season predictions.

”There’s no basis for those kinds of comments,” Bell said, "especially if they’re made by people who don’t know what they’re talking about.”

There might be "no basis" for comments linking operational forecasts and seasonal forecasts — no valid basis, anyway — but NOAA is setting itself for the inevitability that such comments will be made, with or without a "basis," when it releases its seasonal forecast with such a media splash and involves the NHC in that splash. So forgive me if I have little sympathy for the hue and cry that people "who don’t know what they’re talking about" are to blame for this. Ignorant people will always mouth off about things they don’t understand, all the moreso when it suits a political agenda. NOAA is squarely to blame for giving them an easy opportunity to do so.

Philip Klotzbach, who issues the Colorado State forecast along with William Gray, "said long-range predictions satisfy the public’s ‘inherent curiosity’," according to the Herald. Well, he’s a scientist, so he can do stuff simply for curiosity’s sake if he wants to. But NOAA officials aren’t just scientists, they’re also policymakers, and they need to base their actions on sound policy judgments — not just a desire to satisfy idle curiosity. It seems to me that these seasonal forecasts are indeed doing more harm than good, and NOAA should either stop issuing its own forecast or at least vastly scale back the media profile that it chooses to give that forecast. Don’t call a press conference, don’t do interviews, just quietly release the thing on the Internet (loaded with caveats) and satisfy the weather nerds’ "curiosity" that way, without unintentionally (but foreseeably!) misinforming the public at large. And certainly, if you must make a media splash, don’t involve the NHC operational forecasters in it, for heaven’s sake.

It would also be a good idea to issue a press release, whenever anybody releases a seasonal forecast, reminding the media how generally pointless and useless these things are, that they’re really just a curiosity, and that we ought to focus on what matters: preparing for big landfalling storms (which can happen in active and "inactive" seasons alike) and forecasting them accurately when they actually form.

Anyway, read the whole thing. And if anyone is tempted to turn this thread into a global-warming debate, please at least read my PJM piece first, if you haven’t already. I address a lot of the obvious arguments there (like the old stand-by, "OMG If They Can’t Even Forecast A Hurricane Season, Then How Can They Forecast The Climate In 100 Years?? Al Gore Suxxx!!") and I’d rather not repeat myself.

P.S. I will, however, repeat what meteorology Ph.D. student Charles Fenwick wrote back in August, because he made the point very well:

I don’t take too much interest in [seasonal forecasts] personally and don’t like how they are being pushed to the general public. They are a experimental works in progress and should be treated as such. I am most displeased with NOAA’s trumpeting of their forecasts. It gives the public the sense that these are operational forecasts that are on par with the other forecasts of the National Weather Service and that is definitely not the case. [One blog commenter, responding to a dire track forecast for an individual storm, asked], “Where are all the hurricanes the NHC had forecast for the last 2 years? just curious as to why we should panic over predictions that have little or no accuracy?” This shows the confusion that the hurricane season forecasts cause because the National Hurricane Center is not the agency that puts out the seasonal forecast and, as I just said, the seasonal forecasts do not have the same accuracy as the operational forecasts put out by the NHC. … [The seasonal] forecasts are most useful for people who have a stake in the macro-scale, namely insurance companies. They are of little value to individuals.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Welcome, InstaPundit readers!

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The picture gets bleaker and bleaker in Bangladesh, where aid agencies are now estimating a final death toll from Cyclone Sidr between 10,000 and 15,000.

The death toll in Bangladesh from Cyclone Sidr is now over 2,000, with “several thousand” still missing.

Dr. Jeff Masters has a helpful map of the storm’s path and the population density of the surrounding areas. He predicts that “the death toll from Sidr will go much higher, making the storm the deadliest tropical cyclone the world has seen since Hurricane Mitch of 1998.” Mitch killed 9,000 people in Hondruas.

Remember the tropical cyclone that I said was "threaten[ing] massive loss of life" along the Bengal Bay coast? Well, at least 500 people are dead in Bangladesh — and because these are early reports, and this is the third world, I have no doubt that the number will rise significantly.

Cyclone Sidr didn’t weaken at the last minute, as was predicted, and instead made landfall as a strong Category 4 with 150 mph winds, according to Dr. Jeff Masters. But the real problem isn’t the wind; it’s the water. As Dr. Masters points out, "The big killer in Bangladesh cyclones is the storm surge. The triangular shape of Bengal Bay funnels high surges into the apex of the triangle where Bangladesh sits, and the shallow bottom of the bay allows extraordinarily high storm surges to pile up."

The good news, relatively speaking, is that "the portion of coast likely to receive the highest storm surge levels of 20-25 feet is virtually unpopulated" — specifically, the coastal regions of the "Sundarbans Forest, the world’s largest forest of mangrove trees … [which] is the least populated coastal area in the country." However, 10-to-20-foot surge still likely affected "areas with a population of at least a million, to the east of the Sundarbans forest, and inland from the forest."

I assume the death toll will ultimately be well into the thousands, which will make the notion that "it could have been worse," while true, seem rather hollow.

Category 4 Cyclone Sidr is bearing down on the densely populated coasts of Bangladesh and India along the Bay of Bengal. Dr. Jeff Masters has a full update. Sidr is likely to weaken shortly before making landfall, perhaps to a Cat. 1 or 2, but it could still be devastating. As Dr. Masters points out, nine of the thirteen deadliest cyclones in world history — all with death tolls of 40,000 or above — occurred in the Bay of Bengal, where the coasts are low-lying, densely populated, and poverty-stricken. (Hat tip: Aaron.)

My (slightly premature) wrap-up of the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season has been posted at Pajamas Media.

They asked me to write something about the slow hurricane season in the context of the global-warming debate. I’m not sure if they got exactly what they expected, but I tried to be fair, balanced, and honest in my assessment. I’m not the person to ask for a dissertation about the science of global warming itself, but if I can convince a few people on either side of the debate — most likely the skeptics in this particular instance, given PJM’s core audience — to drop some of their more specious arguments, I would consider that a success.

I probably won’t have too much time for hurricane-blogging over the next few days, but there are three tropical disturbances to watch: "90L" in the Gulf, "92L" near the Bahamas, and "91L" off the African coast. Alan Sullivan, in south Florida, is particularly concerned about 92L, which he is already calling "Noel." (90L is the one I previously called "proto-Noel," but that seems less likely with each passing hour. The real threat, if any, is 92L.) Eric Berger has more.

The latest post from Dr. Jeff Masters has an alarming title — "Bahamas tropical disturbance a threat to the Gulf of Mexico" — but it sounds like he suspects Proto-Noel won’t amount to much:

Any storm that forms is forecast to move west-northwestward across the
Gulf of Mexico, pushed by a strong ridge of high pressure expected to
build in. An upper-level anticyclone aloft is expected to develop as
well, providing an environment favorable for intensification. However,
intensification will be slowed by the presence of all the dry air
dragged into the Gulf of Mexico by the upper low, and by the transition
of the storm from subtropical to tropical. The models project a
landfall in Texas or Louisiana on Friday or Saturday. The Hurricane
Hunters are on call to fly into this system Tuesday afternoon, if
necessary.

On the other hand, we’ve been reminded by Humberto and Lorenzo — in case we’d forgotten from 2005 — that tropical systems in the Gulf of Mexico will sometimes take full advantage of even the tiniest window of opportunity to intensify. And Friday/Saturday is a long way off. So Proto-Noel (which is just a mass of thunderstorms with a weak surface rotation at this point, not even a Tropical or Subtropical Depression yet) certainly bears watching. Jeff Gammons has more on it.

Meanwhile, Brian Neudorff is blogging about La Niña. The arrival of La Niña (which, as I’m sure Chris Farley would agree, is Spanish for "the Niña") could herald a busy hurricane season next year. I know, I know, you’ve heard that one before — but even storm-count skeptic Alan Sullivan writes: "If La Nina persists through 2008, next year could be a bad one for hurricanes."

Then again, this year may retroactively turn out to have had one more hurricane than we currently think. Max Mayfield says Tropical Storm Karen may be reclassified as a hurricane when the NHC takes a fresh look at the data after the season. Speaking of Karen, Bob King celebrates her demise, but tries not to get too cocky about it:

Two years ago, I was way too quick
to gloat over the demise of Tropical Depression 10. But some of 10’s
remnants later became Tropical Depression 12, which then grew into
Hurricane Katrina, and we all know how that turned out. Hence my
ironclad rule: Don’t taunt the hurricanes!

So I’ll just settle for this: Oh ghost of Karen, would you terribly mind not coming back? Pretty please?

Another tropical storm, Melissa, has come and gone this weekend while I’ve been too busy blogging about college football to pay attention to the tropics. Also since my last update, Lorenzo has made landfall and died over Mexico, and Karen has petered out over the Atlantic. Alan Sullivan explains:

This season is just plain strange: it has brought an exceptional number of duds. Evidently long-range forecasters like Dr. Gray were half-right. Preconditions for a real storm-fest were present, but tropical systems have been snuffed by unusual upper winds that I began to notice in May. Only Dean and Felix escaped, running straight west at very low latitude.

Sullivan also thinks the National Hurricane Center is “getting sensitive to blogosphere charges of count-padding.” He notes a line in the discussion from when Karen was designated that he interprets as meaning, effectively, “Hey, guys, we didn’t even want to name this one, so back off.”

Hurricane Lorenzo is about to make landfall along the central Mexican Gulf coast. If you don’t remember hearing me mention Lorenzo before on the blog, that’s because I haven’t: like Humberto before him, Lorenzo blew up very quickly, from a tropical depression as late as 11:00 AM today to a hurricane as of 8:00 PM. Now he’s at 80 mph, and some additional slight strengthening is possible before landfall in the next few hours.

Meanwhile, out in the middle of the Atlantic is Tropical Storm Karen, struggling with wind shear and currently no threat to land. That could change eventually, but it’s very hard to say at this point. Alan Sullivan writes: “If conditions were right, this would have been a mighty hurricane. As it is, we will see a feeble, sputtering tropical storm headed slowly northwest then west for days to come. The GFS model keeps Karen alive long enough to recover strength off the East Coast, recurve, and pass just off Cape Cod as a sizeable hurricane.” That’s just one computer model, though, and it’s trying to predict something a long way off (like ~10 days), so take it with several buckets full of salt.

Tropical Storm Karen, which I first blogged about yesterday, has strengthened to 50 mph and is expected to become a minimal hurricane tomorrow before weakening due to increased shear. Karen appears to be no threat to land. Meanwhile, Tropical Depression 13 has formed in the Gulf of Mexico. It could become T.S. Lorenzo as it meanders westward toward the Mexican coast, but is unlikely to reach hurricane strength. SciGuy has more.