The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) cannot reveal weather forecasts from a particularly accurate hurricane prediction model to the public that pays for the American government agency – because of a deal with a private insurance risk firm.
The model at issue is called the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program (HFIP) Corrected Consensus Approach (HCCA). In 2023, it was deemed in a National Hurricane Center (NHC) report [PDF] to be one of the two “best performers,” the other being a model called IVCN (Intensity Variable Consensus).
2020 contract between NOAA and RenaissanceRe Risk Sciences, disclosed in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by The Washington Post, requires NOAA to keep HCCA forecasts – which incorporate a proprietary technique from RenaissanceRe – secret for five years.
Why, yes, in fact. Oh dear. Yes, yes indeedd. Way more people than even exist in America are impacted by these storms every year, since always. Storms that have cost countries MILLIONS of lives, not <60.
And that’s choosing to ignore our neighbors to our south in Mexico, the Caribbean and central America.
On the other side they’re just called typhoons. Same pissed off swirly cloud, much rain, and ocean face punch. Bangladesh holds the record of worst, and I hope that records never broken. That storm is what made Bangladesh independent of Pakistan, look it up.