Damage from Hurricane Hugo, September 1989
If you were here, it's a storm you'll never forget. 20 years ago in September, Hurricane Hugo made landfall just north of Charleston.
Hurricane Hugo was a category two storm when watches went up along the South Carolina coast, and the storm was forecast to hit with no additional strengthening.
The forecast path of Hugo was almost dead on, but the forecast strength was way off.
Hugo was a category four when it made landfall with 135mph winds.
Since then, track forecast errors have been cut in half.
Bill Read, Director of the National Hurricane Center, admits forecasting the strength of a storm continues to challenge meteorologists.
"We had two storms that didn't intensify like we forecast. Gustav was expected to be a stronger hurricane in New Orleans than it was and so was Ike," says Bill Read, with the National Hurricane Center.
On the flip side, two hurricanes took people by surprise when they intensified beyond what was forecast.
Hurricane Charley in 2004 went from a catagory two to a catagory four in just eight hours before hitting Florida.
Humberto went from a tropical depression to strong catagory 1 in 19 hours.
So why is the intensity so difficult to forecast?
The path of a storm is controlled by large systems. The hurricane or tropical storm floats along, kind of like a cork in a stream. The models have a good handle on the flow of these large systems, but much smaller features determine how strong a storm will become and even how fast it may intensify. The thunderstorm activity, the wind shear, the water temperature, etc. all have an impact. It's so complex, the computer models have a hard time handling it.
Despite the challenges, forecasting has come a long way.
There are more forecast models today to predict what's going to happen with the storm.
When the majority of the models give the same or a similar prediction, there's more confidence in the forecast.
The forecasts also go out further out in time.
During Hugo, the forecast cone only went out three days because it wasn't accurate enough beyond the third day. Now, the cone extends five days with the same accuracy as the three day cone twenty years ago.
Those improvements are invaluable to the hurricane hunters who fly into the storm to give an even more detailed and accurate description of what's going on inside the storm.
"This is essentially a flying laboratory, as you can tell. It looks a lot different than many other airplanes. It's constantly gathering data," said Lt. Al Gerramonte, a Hurricane Hunter pilot.
Giving them the most accurate information possible is the National Hurricane Center's primary goal over the next ten years.
Their recently launched hurricane forecast improvement project aims to reduce the track and intensity errors by 50 percent over the next ten years.
They hope to eventually extend the forecast out seven days as models improve.
Two decades of research have led to tremendous strides in forecasting hurricanes - like Hugo.
With more than 50 percent of the US population now living within 50 miles of the coast, accuracy is more important than ever before.
Coming up Tuesday night at 11pm in part two of her special report, First Alert Meteorologist Kristen Van Dyke will show how emergency management changed they way they respond after "Hurricane Hugo: Lessons Learned."
