A Consensus Forecast for Tropical Cyclone Gale Wind Radii

Abstract The National Hurricane Center (NHC) has been forecasting gale force wind radii for many years, and more recently (starting in 2004) began routine postanalysis or “best tracking” of the maximum radial extent of gale [34 knots (kt; 1 kt = 0.514 m s−1)] force winds in compass quadrants surrounding the tropical cyclone (wind radii). At approximately the same time, a statistical wind radii forecast, based solely on climatology and persistence, was implemented so that wind radii forecasts could be evaluated for skill. If the best-track gale radii are used as ground truth (even accounting for random errors in the analyses), the skill of the NHC forecasts appears to be improving at 2- and 3-day lead times, suggesting that the guidance has also improved. In this paper several NWP models are evaluated for their skill, an equally weighted average or “consensus” of the model forecasts is constructed, and finally the consensus skill is evaluated. The results are similar to what is found with tropical cyclone track and intensity in that the consensus skill is comparable to or better than that of the individual models. Furthermore, the consensus skill is high enough to be of potential use as forecast guidance or as a proxy for official gale force wind radii forecasts at the longer lead times.