The Cone of Uncertainty

I'm sorry, I know it looks like I've become obsessed with the weather but a new hurricane is threatening the Gulf coast and it gives me a an opportunity to emphasise one of the points I made last time. Those of you who follow the cricket (and TMS in particular) will have heard and smiled at the phrase 'The Corridor of Uncertainty' which refers to the sort of ball which leaves a batsman in two minds as to whether they should waft the bat at it or leave it well alone.

Here in Hurricane Land we have a very similar situation with the Cone of Uncertainty - you hear this on the weather forecast and can't help but give a wry smile. It means nobody has a clue where the storm is going.

There are problems with tracking a major storm over four or five days - it can cover hundreds and hundreds of miles and turn unexpectedly. So you get these really helpful diagrams like this one:



The green swirl is where Gustav is today. The red ones show the probable track until Monday. Okay, so it's heading for Louisiana you might think. But the large pale circle around the swirl indicate that the centre of the storm could be anywhere within this area. When you draw it like this you get the Cone of Uncertainty beloved of Gulf meteorologists:



Gustav, a category 3 hurricane, could end up anywhere inside the white line; landfall might take place towards the Texas/Mexico border - or in Florida. But these diagrams still have a sober central line that draws the eye (ours as well as Gustav's) towards Louisiana. So, it's still likely to go that way isn't it? Well.. maybe, but there's another map, which compares computer projections by various global weather organisations. Here it is:



So, there's a vague consensus towards it being Louisiana that gets the worst of it, three years after Katrina. But the Met Office's prediction (the white line) scoots off towards Mexico. And the yellow one is ploughing straight through my front room by the looks of things.

As I mentioned last time, the anticipation is the worst bit (so far) and the inconvenient situation is that we all have to be ready, because by the time we know for certain that it is coming our way it will be too late to prepare.

Now I formally promise that I won't do this every time a storm starts heading my way, but this is the busiest week of hurricane season: Hanna is already on her way to Puerto Rico and two more systems are beginning to organise in the Atlantic. So forgive me if it looks like I'm using these notes as some group therapy session to help me with my Limey culture shock.

Hurricane Watch

I’m not complaining. All I’m saying is that I now know more about hurricanes and tropical storms than I would ever have wished, and we are still 15 hours or so from Edouard making landfall on the Texas coast. Yep, Edouard. It’s not enough that these faceless meteorological phenomena are given names (and, of course, having names means that it is personal), but do they have to be given daft names? It makes it harder to take the threat seriously. But I’m compensating for that in other ways as you’ll discover.

For the record, Edouard is a Tropical Storm which might, just might, turn into a Class 1 (that is to say, ‘small’) Hurricane by noon tomorrow. It is aiming straight for central Houston. That is to say, my house.

His (although I think one is supposed to say ‘it’s’) sudden arrival has left me in a bit of sorry state because I have simply no way of judging the risk that’s attached. Laura, a veteran of sitting out typhoons during her Hong Kong childhood, is annoyingly unfazed which means I have to be worried on her behalf as well as my own and that of the (utterly oblivious) children.

I knew there would be Hurricanes and Tropical Storms – I guess I just got a little distracted by the whole moving to another country thing. There was just too much to worry about before we could even get here. That changed pretty quickly as we were driven from the airport. As you may have heard, one of the first things we saw here was a dot matrix sign on the Freeway that read: ‘Hurricane forming in the Gulf. Fill your car.’ Eyebrows were raised, I can tell you.

That warning was for Hurricane Dolly who, after causing half an hour of anxiety, turned out to be curving gently away towards Mexico. It brushed the distant tip of the other end of Texas as it made landfall, nearly 300 miles away and we had three days of lush, hot sub-tropical rain as a result. But even before the first fat drops fell we had forgotten all about Dolly. We were busy, again, doing all the hectic, hitting-the-ground-running sort of stuff that had to get done. Then, just as we were celebrating how we had got everything sorted before Laura was due to start work (today), someone (alright Caroline, you!) whispered that a Tropical Depression had unexpectedly turned into a Tropical Storm off of the Louisiana coast. That was Sunday night. The speed with which this new storm has blown up seems to have surprised everyone: it’s now Monday afternoon and the whole state is on the alert.

Or is it?

It’s difficult for me to tell how seriously people are taking the situation and this is my biggest problem. Because I am new here I have no way of effectively gauging what’s going on. All I know for certain is that I am supposed to be prepared and I’m fairly sure I’m not. Other than that it’s all mixed messages. The Governor of Texas pre-emptively declares an emergency, but the Mayor of Galveston (the coastal town that is really going to get smacked full-on) says there’s no need to evacuate. The Mayor of Houston says we should put out our trash as normal in the morning, but that we shouldn’t think about turning up for jury service. It’s a tad confusing.

I check the online advice (and there is a lot of that) but it appears to try to cater for all eventualities. One update includes this gloomy forecast:

"Residents should prepare for tropical storm force winds. Wind speeds are forecast to be highest near and to the east of where the center makes landfall. Mobile homes in the path of the strongest winds will experience moderate damage. Houses of poor to average construction will have damage to shingles, siding, and gutters. Some windows will be blown out. Unfastened outdoor items of light to moderate weight will become airborne, causing additional damage and possible injury. Many large tree branches will be snapped, with rotting small to medium sized trees uprooted. Dozens of power lines will be blown down with the high likelihood of local power outages."

That sounds alright doesn’t it? Or is that bad? Is my house of poor to average construction? Can a house catch shingles? It is disappointingly easy to get hysterical. Do I really need to stockpile 3 gallons of water per person per day? Am I supposed to board up all the windows, or is that overkill? Apparently I need to be able to turn off the house’s water, electricity and gas supplies. Hell, I’ve only lived here a week – I haven’t even worked out what all the light switches do yet.

More bells and whistles than the Moscow State CircusYes, total reassurance can be yours for sixty bucks. Plus tax.

In the end, I decided I needed some water and a battery-powered radio at least. Back in Best Buys (such a lovely shop) I freak out a little and end up spending $60 on a radio that takes AAs, but also has a rechargeable lithium battery and a crank handle. It also has a torch, a siren and an endorsement from the Red Cross. Which has got to be good, yeah?

But, out and about, people seem calm and unperturbed. In the supermarket someone actually sniggered when they saw me heaving 2.5 gallon water containers into my trolley. So am I over-reacting or not?

Perhaps I need more information? Well actually, probably not, no. There are leaflets in the supermarket; email and text alerts to subscribe to; hourly TV and radio news bulletins and specially extended weather reports; and there are pages and pages and pages of internet briefings, charts, warnings, blogs, radar scans and so forth and so on, forever. The boffins are out in force. Chief Meteorologist for Channel 11 News Gene Norman (formerly of NASA) soberly makes the point that the most likely scenario is that Edouard won’t become a hurricane. He pivots and hands over to special guest analyst Doctor Frank (formerly head of the National Weather Service, with 40 years of studying hurricanes) who, in a croaking, avuncular drawl, adds that there are eerie parallels to Alicia in 1983 – the last major Hurricane to hit Houston, it stayed innocuous until the last few hours before strengthening madly and making a dash for Downtown.

Gene and  Frank tell it how it might be.

“This probably won’t happen again,” says Dr Frank. “I’m not saying it will, it probably won’t. But it did that time. And it might this time. Or it might not. But it might.”

Great. So this is my preparedness: I have enough drinking water to flood the house myself if I have to and a radio that could probably survive a nuclear explosion. In the meantime I am gorging on weather reports until I am scared silly.

Then I go outside and talk to real people who are not panicking and I get some sort of momentary, vicarious reassurance. Jim, my new neighbour, who looks uncannily like Billy Bob Thornton and has a handshake that I’m not going to forget in a hurry, has seen it all before, having lived in Houston for 23 years (so he missed Alicia then, I think to myself). He is not running scared.

The major problem with a storm like this, he tells me, is the storm surge that affects the coastal region. That won’t trouble us. Flooding inland is not uncommon and our street was hit badly by Hurricane Alison in 2001 when half an entire year’s average rainfall fell in 24 hours. But even then, my house (and his) remained untouched – coincidentally they occupy the highest land for some distance, although the entire neighbourhood seems flat as a pancake – and the drainage has been dramatically improved since then.

My best guess (as a rank outsider) is that the news networks and the authorities are terrified of underplaying the risk, appearing too casual, or just massively mishandling the situation. There are precedents. Last year Humberto gave the city a nasty surprise and in 2005 Hurricane Rita prompted a botched evacuation of Houston that left hundreds of thousands of people stranded on the freeway without food, water or petrol, just weeks after Katrina had smashed into New Orleans. If Rita hadn't changed course it would have been carnage.

All day, the sky has been a serene cloudless blue. No sign or hint of trouble. Just now I took the trash out (as instructed) and great purple puffballs of cloud had sprouted ominously overhead; the air was thick and sticky. There is an awfulness in knowing that it is coming, of having to wait for the first banks of tremendous tropical rain to lash down. But the storm will come and it will pass and by this time tomorrow we will be laughing about it. Probably.

By November (the end of hurricane season) I’ll be much better at this. The trick seems to be to be prepared for all possible outcomes, and to be able to cope with fast-changing and unpredictable situations. I might not be ready this time, but should Edouard and I ever cross paths again, I won’t have an excuse.

And that’s not as unlikely as you might think - turns out this year’s list of names will be reused in 2014.

I said I knew too much.