Cone Of Death?

Last hurricane season I coined a term. I got sick of hearing "cone of uncertainty" or "cone of error" on the TV - so I started to call it the "cone of death". This stuck better than "cone is peril" or "cone of destruction" or "cone of doom", and was a lot shorter than "cone of imminent death and destruction".

So what is the cone of death? Let me demonstrate.

Here we can see the projected 5 day cone of death for tropical storm Emily. The solid white part of the cone of death is the three day projection.

Here is how this works. The closer you are to the center of the cone of death the more trouble you are in.

And to make matters even worse, the black line is not really the important part, because strong winds can extend well beyond the line. The black line is just the center of the cone of death.

Forecasters say "cone of error" because the eye of the storm can be anywhere (or nowhere) inside the cone.

In other words, they do not really know. All they can do is give a probability.

Now I want to point your attention to a few details. You can see that I labeled the map for you. I am somewhere in the small red dot on in Florida. The cone of death is that big huge cone shaped thing, and the storm is the orange dot at the narrow end of the cone. As the cone projects out, error increases, and the cone gets wider.

Dennis never really concerned me, other than the possibility it was going to screw up my vacation. But this storm path is causing a bit more concern.

There is a high pressure to the north of the storm, but it not forecast to go anywhere. This means the storm is going to continue to go more west than north.

But the black line is not forecast to be in open water. As long as the center of the storm stays over land it can not gain strength.

So now you can play along! You are in the small red dot in Florida. What do you do after you read this? Freak out? Run in circles? Buy beer and rope?

(the correct answer is buy beer and rope. Sunday I might get to tie the boat to the trailer, and then tie the trailer to the planet).

Or maybe not. It is still too far away to really know. But play along anyway! Check the blog daily for an updated hurricane map and cone of death. It will be at least 5 days before people start to totally freak out. Right now all I am doing is watching it.

I am also going to buy some plexiglass and make an enclusure for an old web cam. Stay tuned for the Lazy Iguana Hurricane Web Cam!!

Also, my potato has not moved very much. Click HERE, then enter your zip code and press enter. Thats it! Pretty simple really.