Time to strip the skinny track line from the forecast cone

Misinterpretation can cost lives by not evacuating

The black line can mislead people into thinking the eye or center of a hurricane would not deviate from it.

Welcome to Florida, now here are the rules: Don’t feed alligators and know the cone.

The most vital piece of information to keep safe from hurricanes is the track cone.

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The cone of uncertainty or “cone” is the centerpiece graphic used by the National Hurricane Center to convey hurricane risk to the public.

More than 100 people in Florida died from Hurricane Ian and media reports are awash with survivors saying they thought the storm was headed to Tampa Bay.

Ever since the first advisory for Ian, Fort Myers always stayed in the cone, and despite that threat, people may have focused on the black line initially aimed north of Ian’s actual landfall into Charlotte Harbor Estuary and underestimated the southern landfall potential.

NHC Hurricane track always had Fort Myers in the cone.

Ever since the first NHC cone of uncertainty appeared in 2002, people have assumed the skinny black line is where the storm will make landfall, which is not the case.

The black line is so misinterpreted that National Hurricane Center meteorologists prefer it to be left out of the graphic going so far as providing an “off option” on its website graphics. The Weather Channel also stripped it from the network.

Max Mayfield former Director at the NHC stated, “If you know what the black line means and how to use it, there’s no problem. But some people don’t know how to use it” (Kaye 2005).

This season the Weather Authority removed the track line off the cone to minimize confusion but it still helps to know the cone’s limitations:

  • The cone does not predict the actual landfall location but the average forecast track errors over the last 5 years.
  • The size of the cone does not represent how strong it will become.
  • It cone does not represent the size of the hurricane or the potential swath of destruction.

The cone shows the prediction of where the center of the storm will be over the next five days and the width gets larger because errors increase in time.

Forecasts have gotten much better through the years but still have average errors of about 200 miles five days out. They are occasionally off leading to tracks outside the cone on average once out of every three storms. This is why it is important to recognize the potential threats in the entire cone.

Hurricane Ian was always focused on Florida but its exact path was especially unpredictable, which was indicated by the cone extending from Naples to Tampa.

The lesson is less attention on the black line and more focus on the areas in a cone. It is critical for people in it to prepare as if the storm is coming especially for those who need extra lead time for evacuations.


About the Author:

After covering the weather from every corner of Florida and doing marine research in the Gulf, Mark Collins settled in Jacksonville to forecast weather for The First Coast.