Failure is not an option, it is a way of life.
Every year, a mysterious front organization in the Rocky Mountains issues predictions that every year there will be hundreds of hurricanes in Florida and the other Atlantic and Gulf Coast areas. The first time that this mysterious group was awarded a contract paying your Federal Tax dollars for these predictions was during the George W. Bush era. Their track record of wrong predictions gave rise to questions from early on. See "Counting All Hurricanes! Forecasters Fumble, Rockies Crumble, Florida Humble" (Insurance Claims and Issues Blog, November 9, 2011). The Federal Taxpayer money contract to pay the Rocky Mountain group for their Hurricane predictions has continued every year ever since.
This group's predictions for 2013 were false. That is consistent with this group's record of successes and failures in predicting hurricanes. They have not been good at it.
Even for the Rocky Mountain Gang, their actual record of predictions for 2013 cannot be improved upon. They predicted many hurricanes, as usual, and several "named hurricanes" too. There were two hurricanes to hit anywhere in the United States in 2013. The damage those two hurricanes caused taken together did not make anyone's list of major damage caused by weather in 2013 in the U.S., including the Federal Government's list (see linked USA Today newspaper report, below).
The Rocky Mountain Gang was wrong about the number of named hurricanes in 2013, too, of course.
It is reported that weather-related damage -- i.e., damage from storms, floods, tornadoes and so on -- was overall actually less than predicted in the U.S. last year. See Doyle Rice and Frank Pompa, "2013 a Calm Year in U.S. for Hurricanes, Tornadoes / U.S. Had a Warm, Wet Year in 2013 / Seven Separate Weather-Related Disasters Caused at Least $1 Billion in Damage" (USA Today Online, Thursday, January 16, 2014).
It is a safe prediction, however, that these facts will not stand in the way of the Rocky Mountain Gang making hurricane predictions for Florida and other coastal areas in 2014. It is interesting to note the fact reported in the linked report from USA Today, above, that the Federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has its own National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina. Why not use them for predictions about hurricanes? Why not put our Federal Taxpayer money into their already-existing budget to predict hurricanes particularly since they often stand in the way of hurricanes, being located in North Carolina and all? It is something of a recurring mystery why Government resources, particularly those available through NOAA, are not respected for their demonstrated competence, let alone why they are not used more often. See "Postscript to Not-a-Hurricane Sandy and Your Hurricane Deductible" (Insurance Claims and Issues Blog, November 19, 2012).
Back to the Rocky Mountain Gang at Colorado State University and their hurricane predictions paid for by Federal Taxpayers. Being wrong never has stopped them before, so why should their consistent record on successful predictions stand in their way now?
Do you think they will give the money back?
© 2014 by Dennis J. Wall. All rights reserved. No claim to original U.S. Government works.