Jose, Maria, and how Panasonic nailed Hurricane Irma

The Atlantic hurricane season is once again the biggest weather story this week.

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Hurricane Jose

Hurricane Jose continues to churn off the U.S. east coast.

Tropical storm and coastal flood warnings continue from North Carolina's Outer Banks all the way to Cape Cod.

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It looks like the core of Jose will stay offshore, but tropical storm conditions featuring high winds and will rake the coast in the next 48 hours.

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Hurricane Maria

Hurricane Maria is the bigger story this week. Maria intensified rapidly today. Her tight, clear pinhole eye structure is a bad sign for her intensity going forward. The island of Dominica is likely to take a direct, devastating hit tonight.

Interaction with Dominica and neighboring Islands is likely to have little effect on Maria's intensity going forward. The U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico are in harm's way in the next 48 hours. St. Croix was lucky with Irma. Sadly now that island appears to be in Maria's direct path.

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Category 5?

Maria has all the tools to reach high end category 4 to near category 5 status in the next 48 hours.

The Atlantic hurricane season is like a train wreck this year. It's painful to watch, but you can't look away.

How Panasonic nailed Irma

You know about the success of the European model and hurricane tracks. But did you know Panasonic's in-house forecast models did a better job with track forecasts 4-7 days out with Irma?

Washington Post's Capitol Weather Gang's Jason Samenow has a great write up on how they did it, and what it may mean going forward.

I pulled a couple of clips form Jason's piece.

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Of the massive, high-powered computer models run by governments and institutions to forecast hurricanes, the vaunted European modelhad the best performance during Irma. But there’s a little-known entity that preliminary data show outperformed the European model as well as the others.

Enter Panasonic, the electronics company best known for making televisions.

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On balance, forecast data released by Panasonic reveals its forecasts were the most accurate leading up to Irma’s landfall on Marco Island, Fla. (Note that this forecast data, provided by Panasonic, has not been independently evaluated. But Panasonic has posted the data online and welcomes scholars to review it.)

The Panasonic model forecasts were especially good about four to seven in days in advance, the data show, outperforming the European and American GFS models. Its forecast for Irma’s track had a substantially smaller error, on average

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As new computer models are born in the private sector, with the ability to improve on the performance on government models, it raises questions about access to their information — an issue that has some ethical dimensions. If private companies have data that can help protect life and property, should they make it available? Is it the government’s role to step in and buy this information for the purpose of making it available to the public and decision-makers?