Hurricane Center Looks To Create Longer Range Forecasts

As part of efforts to give improved forecasts, the National Hurricane Center will create six-and seven-day forecasts to track storms this hurricane season, but the project will be kept secret.

The forecasts will be part of four experiments to be carried out by the center for this season, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported.

Last year's longer forecast experiment was leaked to the public and was stopped.

"We weren't able to button them up; people were finding out," said James Franklin, a hurricane specialist.

This year, experts will experiment with extended tropical weather outlooks, creating advisories for disturbances before they classified as tropical storms, and issuing watches and warnings when disturbances are threatening land masses.

In an effort to get better intensity forecasts, a computer model will get information from a Doppler radar coming from a hurricane hunter plane when it flies into the storms.

“There’s a fair amount of evidence that Doppler data in high resolution models can improve intensity forecasts,” Franklin was quoted as saying by the newspaper. “That’s exciting.”