Forecasting Floyd's Path

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

September 16, 1999 / 7:14 PM EDT / CBS

As Hurricane Floyd was building force over the Atlantic five days ago, scientists felt confident the storm was going to make a turn to the north towards the Carolinas, reports CBS News Correspondent Anthony Mason.

John Jones of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said then that Floyd was not going to make a direct hit on Florida.

"That's a very dramatic improvement in our forecasting. And we think we did very well with Floyd," Jones said.

For the forecasters, the average error on landfall of a hurricane is about 200 miles. With Floyd they were off by only 100.

"We've had a number of breakthroughs in the science of forecasting," said Chris Landsea of NOAA. "We're doing much better now at knowing where a hurricane is going to go."

The reason: Scientists can now launch an aerial assault at approaching hurricanes. NOAA's new $15 million high-altitude jet sent back critical information about Floyd.

"This flies around the hurricane to give us a better reading of the environment around it," says NOAA's Jones.

And C-130s, flying laboratories, send state-of-the-art sensors into the storm's eye and walls, measuring wind speeds all the way down to the sea's surface - information satellites cannot see.

"But we're still woefully inadequate when it comes to the total understanding of what causes the hurricane to form and move like it does," said meteorologist Jim Lucchine.

So the forecasters were especially cautious about floyd and warned Florida about a possible hit. For all that they now know, there's so much more that they don't.