As for minimizing damage from hurricane – Dominica is naturally by being mountainous, which is the island best form of protection and considering also a large percentage of houses are built from concrete.

When it comes to protecting your vehicle, It’s my guess most people just park their vehicles in places they think are safe and just hope for the best.

Chris

Joel

For years, the task was simply to create mathematical models that would be fairly accurate predictors. Early computers were so slow compared to today’s that it might take several days for a computer to run the program to “predict” the next day’s weather. But that was all right, because it was at least possible, with hindsight, to determine whether the model was any good.

I used to wonder what the weather service meant when it said “50% chance of rain”. I thought that they meant that they would be correct if it rained or if it did not, giving them a 100% accuracy record (I thought that would be cheating). But I learned that they meant that given the presently measured conditions, the is a 50% likelihood of rain the next day.

I also learned that the complexity of weather models increases very greatly as the forecast period lengthens. That is why today’s forecast for tomorrow is typically much more reliable than for a week from today. There is a trade-off: Long-term models can be made simpler so that they will run faster on the computer, but then they will be less accurate. Or they can be made very complex and take a long time to run, and might be quite accurate, but may not provide adequate forecast warning and preparation time. Also, those long but good computer runs can’t be checked until after the forecast period.

Most importantly, the longer the forecast the more general and less accurate it is likely to be. But we do know from experience when the hurricane season is, and it is wise to be prepared.