Hurricane Maria may hit the U. S., but meteorologists and the many spaghetti plots they use to forecast hurricane paths are still unsure.
As Hurricane Maria strengthens in the Atlantic—it’s now a Category 3 storm—the “spaghetti plots” meteorologists use to visualize potential storm paths show Hurricane Maria could bear down on the Caribbean and southern United States similar to Hurricane Irma.
The latest spaghetti plots show Maria moving toward the Leeward islands, as well as the British and U. S. Virgin Islands, which are just beginning relief efforts for Hurricane Irma damage. While it’s still too soon to tell if Hurricane Maria will hit the U. S, the National Hurricane Center predicts Maria could strengthen to a Category 4 by the time it makes landfall in Puerto Rico on Wednesday, Sept. 20. Already, Puerto Rico has issued evacuation orders for four areas, according to ABC News.
Spaghetti plots are a succinct way to show the many different paths a storm could take, focusing specifically on the trajectory of the eye of the storm. Its name comes from the noodle-like paths on a map.
But visualizing the path of hurricanes is more of an art than a science, and spaghetti plots aren’t always accurate. It’s also not the only way to track a storm. The National Hurricane Center, for example, relies on the “ cone of uncertainty ” which generates a five-day forecast.
One advantage of using spaghetti plots is that they combine many models created through different methods, adding to the confidence of the predictions when lots of the paths overlap. And when making hurricane predictions more than five days out, spaghetti plots are as informative as forecasts get.
Some spaghetti plots even lean on data from ensembles, which group many predictions from the same time span together. The Weather Channel advises using ensembles in the medium to long-term forecast realm to see all of the possibilities for a given period.
There are several different types of spaghetti models .
Meteorologists consider the European Center for Medium-Range Weather, known as the European model, to be the most accurate. In fact, the European model’s predictions for Hurricane Irma were closer to the actual path than other models. And it’s worth noting that this model doesn’t show that Maria will hit the U. S.
The other common e nsemble model comes from America’s Global Forecast System. This spaghetti plot show s Hurricane Maria missing Florida, but possibly making landfall further up the eastern coast U. S. over the weekend. Though it’s still too early to tell.
