Hurricanes and Bad Luck

Hurricane Ike turned out not to be as bad as predicted. Aside from a lucky shift to the east just before landfall, it also appears that the computer models made an inaccurate prediction about the height of the surge around Galveston.

Now some people are complaining that Ike was over-hyped by the major news media, the National Hurricane Center, perhaps in furtherance of some sort of “nanny-state” agenda.

I can’t say what the major news media did, because I didn’t pay any attention to them, but there’s no evidence the NHC over-reacted. Amateur hurricane blogger Brendan Loy, who also predicted dire consequences when Ike made landfall, explains why:

I believe the information I disseminated, and the warnings I relayed, were accurate and reasonable at the time I posted them. And that, as I know Sullivan would agree, is the only standard by which statements about hurricanes can be fairly evaluated: the standard of contemporaneous reasonableness, not 20/20 hindsight.

That’s exactly right. Weather prediction is filled with uncertainties, and no matter how good the prediction, there’s always plenty of randomness in the actual behavior of a hurricane.

To be clear, what actually happens certainly does matter if the model that lead to the prediction needs to be adjusted. But it’s not some form of moral failing—hyping or downplaying the danger, depending which way things actually go—if you rely on the best available model to make decisions and that model turns out to be wrong.

It’s not just hurricanes, either. I believe that all of life is like this. A doctor can do his best to treat a disease and still lose his patient through no fault of his own. A cop can rightfully shoot an armed bad guy, only to discover that the bad guy’s gun was fake. The driver of a car can do everything right and still hit a pedestrian.

Bad luck is not a mistake. It’s just what happens.