Hurricane Ivan

In response to suggestions that we look at the several hurricanes in the summer/fall of 2004, I did try an exploratory look.

Hurricane Ivan was in the news for more than a week, and wrought havoc in several places at many separate times. We are today (18th) getting rain in the NY area as the last gasp from Ivan. What would be a good time period to specify in a prediction? About the closest I could come to a sensibly limited segment would be a few hours following 3 am on the 16th (when Pensacola was wrecked). But why not when Grand Cayman was hit, or Jamaica, etc? It is like the middle east war.

The following figure shows the data of Sept 18, and the time Ivan made landfall in the northern Gulf coast is marked. Perhaps one could construe the precipitous fall of the trace following that time as correlated with the strong focus (in the US) on the hurricane, but of course this is not a formal prediction and hence cannot be rigorously interpreted. It is, however, interesting to look at.

Hurricane
 Ivan


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