Reply #6: here's an alarming story from 2005 -- the year of Katrina

[nashville_brook]

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12862412.htm

Money woes stifle hurricane science

(snip)

A former director and two senior researchers say they've pleaded for 10 years for an increase of at least 50 percent, but NOAA has granted only incremental bumps that barely kept pace with inflation -- or no increases at all.

''Our requests were dead on arrival,'' said former Hurricane Research Division Director Hugh Willoughby, who quit the post in 2002 after seven years of denials. ''Basically, it was a fool's errand.''

(snip)

At the Research Division, it has come to this: Black studies the intricacies of storms that killed thousands of people on a rigged personal computer because the one NOAA gave him was 8 years old and obsolete. Key data from hurricane hunter flights is stored on a 10-year-old computer; there's no money to replace it.

The screen that researchers use to dissect satellite images is a hand-me-down from a lab in Colorado. Devices they rely on to test ocean temperature were Cold War leftovers donated by the Navy.

(snip)

The nine-track tapes, so far unexplored, are filled with data from radars and hurricane hunter planes, documenting how eye-wall changes made hurricanes stronger, how cool water made them weaker, how cloud patterns produced torrential rainfall.

(snip)

By examining dozens of storms, scientists also hope to find patterns that can help them pierce two of the biggest blind spots in hurricane forecasting:

• The sudden strengthening of storms just before landfall, like Hurricane Charley in 2004, Hurricane Iris in 2001 and Hurricane Keith in 2000, all mild-mannered hurricanes that unexpectedly exploded.

• Rainfall prediction, a particularly unsettling mystery because freshwater flooding has become the No. 1 killer during hurricanes. Deadly flooding sideswiped Richmond, Va., during Hurricane Gaston in 2004, South Florida during Hurricane Irene in 1999, and Honduras and Nicaragua during Hurricane Mitch in 1998. During that hurricane alone, more than 9,000 people died.