7-Day Advance Forecasts

National Hurricane Center Director Bill Read said that science will improve to the point where forecasters can reliably issue forecasts showing where a hurricane will be a week ahead of time.

“We’re two to five years from a seven-day forecast,” Read told reporters while attending a South Carolina conference on hurricane forecasting and warning. He noted the National Weather Service now issues regular daily weather forecasts a week out – but not yet for hurricanes.

“But no one makes decisions based on that kind of forecast that can kill them,” Read said. “There is plenty of time to recover from a bad decision to play golf on Saturday when it’s Monday; it’s not going to kill you. If you start moving nursing home patients at seven days (ahead) you could kill them.”

Read said the Hurricane Center, which now issues five-day forecasts on the giant storms, doesn’t want to issue a seven-day forecast until there is greater confidence in the predictions.

But, he said, better forecasts won’t help the public if they ignore them.

“The biggest challenge is to crack the denial,” he said.