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A Tricky Forecast

Charlene Flener, pictured seated in a wheelchair, in Southwest Baptist Church on Sunday, October 2; Fiener’s home was damaged during the hurricane and she is staying at the church temporarily.
Charlene Flener, pictured seated in a wheelchair, in Southwest Baptist Church on Sunday, October 2; Fiener’s home was damaged during the hurricane and she is staying at the church temporarily. Photo: Win McNamee (Getty Images)

Hurricane predictions are often difficult to communicate to the public, and Ian had a particularly tricky journey as it made landfall. Early forecasts made as the storm began to churn toward Florida predicted that Ian would track a path north, hitting Tampa the hardest; seemingly last-minute on Tuesday, the storm tacked to the east, aiming for the counties of Lee and Collier.

“There were a lot of alternate futures that were possible,” Kim Klockow-McClain, a research scientist at NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory, told the Washington Post. “Communication is not as simple when there are a lot of possible outcomes.”

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