Ill Wind, Bad Predictions

Preparing for a hurricane when you know it's coming your way is hard enough. But if the hurricane predictions are off track and you don't expect the storm to hit you, the result can be disastrous. In her two-part series in the Miami Herald, reporter Debbie Cenziper tells us that breakdowns in weather forecasting equipment at the National Hurricane Center are causing faulty predictions. Cenziper's investigation shows that the weather tracking equipment has failed forecasters during nearly half of the hurricanes that struck land since 1992.
''It's almost like we're forecasting blind,'' she quotes a National Weather Service officer as saying.
www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12853399.htm