It’s almost that time of the year again–– hurricane season. Experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been working around the clock to get ready.
“I think we have some new initiatives this year that I think will help us better convey storm surge,” said Storm Surge Specialist Jamie Rhome
Rhome said they’ve been making improvements to their modeling systems. Storm surge is when the sea level rises and it can be the deadliest part of a hurricane. However, Rhome believes their updated modeling system will be extremely beneficial during this hurricane 2020 season.
"Previously the model would try to guess the hurricane size and how big it was, and now we’re feeding it direct data so it’s starting at a better point," said Rhome.
These changes will help the data be more accurate, shrinking the zones along the coastline, and allowing Rhome's team to focus on the areas that can potentially be hit the hardest.
Hurricane Irma— a storm that devastated Southwest Florida in 2017— lead them to make this change to their system.
“Irma was a very complicated structure in size and it went through many transformations on land," said Rhome. "This had huge ramifications and that really motivated us to try and nail that down a little bit better.”
Many have wondered how the coronavirus will impact the hurricane season. After all, we depend on teams of experts to work together and gather data, but with social distancing that could be difficult.
However, Rhome said the virus had the opposite effect on his teams' work.
“This new environment has enabled be to dig into our projects and work really really closely with my teams," said Rhome. "We are ahead on our meetings and projects in terms of milestones.”
