CAPE CORAL, Fla. — Over the past several years, the National Hurricane Center has been improving both the accuracy of their forecasts and how those forecasts are released. Starting in 2025, those forecasts, including the famous cone, will be released even earlier.
Fox 4 Meteorologist Andrew Shipley spoke with meteorologists from the National Weather Service about these changes.
"We're going to be issuing advisories for storms that are still in their formative stages," said Robert Molleda, Meteorologist In Change at NWS Miami. "In other words, even before they get a name..."
With forecast advisories being released further ahead of potential impacts, that will give people more time to prepare.
"Before those would only begin at 48 hours prior to expected impacts and now with the 72 hour in advance, not only is that information coming out well before when watches and warnings would be issued, but then we do have that extra time to get that watch out up to 60 hours before those impacts are expected," said Jennifer Hubbard, Warning Coordination Meteorologist at NWS Tampa.
This is becoming even more important, as stronger storms are becoming more the norm.
"From 2017 to 2024 we have seen as many Category 4 and 5 landfalls as we had in the period from 1960 to 2016," said Hubbard.
Impacts can be felt far away from landfall, like we saw with Hurricane Milton.
"People have to understand that these impacts are wide ranging whether it's tornadoes in the outer bands like Milton for example, whether its storm surge extending far from the center as we often see in the Gulf and winds that can spread really far inland," said Molleda.
This year the Hurricane Center will continue to issue its new experimental cone that started the middle of last hurricane season. This new cone includes watches and warnings, not only along the coast, but also inland.
"Think of a hurricane or tropical storm as a very large weather system that's impacting many many areas of the state of Florida," said Molleda. "The cone is only telling us where the center of the storm is more likely to be but it's not telling us where the impacts are going to be and that's what we have to remember."
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