An interview with Bill Read of the National Hurricane Center, Part 1

It would normally be at best a left-handed compliment to call someone's career path "stormy," but in Bill Read's case it's an accurate, unbiased summation.

In January, Read was named by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration to head its Tropical Prediction Center, a Miami-based operation whose best-known division is the National Hurricane Center. The center's acting deputy director since August 2007, Read has a professional résumé in the world of deadly storms that goes back 30-plus years.

In 1971 and 1972, as a recent college grad, Read flew numerous missions as an on-board meteorologist with the Navy's

Bill Read smiles as he talks to reporters during a news conference in Miami, Jan. 25, 2008. Read was named by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration to head its Tropical Prediction Center. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

Read and his team were on scene in July 2003 when Hurricane Claudette made landfall on the Texas coast. He also was part of the Hurricane Liaison Team at the National Hurricane Center when Hurricane Isabel came ashore on the Outer Banks of North Carolina in September 2003.

Homeland1.com caught up with Read by phone last month while he was attending the Florida Governor's Hurricane Conference and talked about what's new at the hurricane center, where forecasting technology is going and why you can't get everything you need from a satellite.

Homeland1: Is there anything new in the last year or so at the Tropical Prediction Center or National Hurricane Center in terms of programs or technologies you'd like us to know about?

Read: If you go to our Web site, you might be able to pick up some examples; we're upgrading some of the products and services provided on the Web. For example, we're having a graphic on there that has all the initial conditions of a storm and the advisory. That coupled with the traditional track forecast gives a lot of information. We're experimenting with our graphical tropical weather outlook a little further this year and actually indicating Low, Medium or High probability of developing into a tropical cyclone in the next day or so on that graphic, so that people can get a feel for which ones we're really concerned about.

Homeland1: In what way is that new or different from what you've done in the past?

Read: Well, we didn't have anything on the potential for the genesis of a storm, really didn't have any skill in that. That's something that we developed over the past several years in working very closely with the data. The initial conditions are something we haven't had in Internet form. Obviously, we had it internally, but now we have a way to get it out to the public. It's a public-access Web site; www.nhc.noaa.gov will get you there.

One other product that we're starting this year is the probabilistic storm surge. It will be an indication in percent of the probability of exceeding a 5-foot storm surge for a landfalling tropical cyclone. That was experimented with for several years and is now operational.

Hurricane Michelle in Nassau, Bahamas, Nov. 5, 2001. (AP Photo/Craig Lenihan)

As far as technology and models and all that, there's improvements in the models, but nothing really new to present this year.

Homeland1: What is the significance of the 5-foot storm surge?

Read: That's a good question. It's kind of an initial step. We have enough data to come up with a good statistic on it, so the value of the science in it is good. Plus, it actually works out in a lot of communities along the coast that that's pretty much the minimum threshold. A 5-foot tide will get you to where you start to get impacts of flooding.

Most Category 1 storms can produce close to a 5-foot tide, therefore anything stronger will produce that, so there's enough data in the actual events in the past. Since it's a statistic, it requires past data to develop. If you try to get the higher values, like a 10-foot or higher than that, then you get fewer and fewer points. We're working on a way to present that.

Homeland1: You refer to these as tropical cyclones. There's really no difference between a hurricane and a cyclone, right?

Read: From our point of view in the Atlantic basin, when we say "tropical cyclone," that includes "depression," "storm" and "hurricane." So when we say "hurricane," it's just those tropical cyclones that have hurricane-force winds. A tropical storm has to have greater than 34 but less than 74 knots.

Homeland1: I had heard a rumor a year or two ago that in view of Katrina, there was a possibility of the hurricane center or the National Weather Service creating a Category 6 for hurricanes. Is that something that's happening?

Read: The Saffir-Simpson scale that we use now was actually derived to simplify and categorize in a numerical sense what we had just been saying in a subjective sense prior to Hurricane Camille [in 1969]. When that was implemented, it was based on wind speed. That is the defining function of it, because wind doesn't care where it's at. If you have a 120mph wind, it's a 120mph wind in its impact on a house no matter where you put it.

Whereas with a storm surge, which is what the issue is with people wanting a more complex scale, the impact is different everywhere. A Category 4 hurricane by wind making landfall on certain coastlines in the Caribbean won't produce a 10-foot surge, whereas a Category 4 making a north Gulf Coast landfall, as we saw, can produce up to 30 feet. So there's no constant there. It would be a very complicated code; it would have to be different for every piece of the coastline. I think it would totally violate the original concept of the scale, which was to simplify and make it easily recognized by people who don't normally deal with hurricanes.

Homeland1: It's the storm surge that causes most of the damage and most of the fatalities, correct?

Read: It has the potential for the highest fatalities. Generally speaking, because of the way we've developed on the coastlines, we get more dollar damage from the windstorm part of the major hurricanes. Once you get over 100mph winds, you start inducing more and more damage on the infrastructure, and that goes well inland, beyond where the storm surge goes. Now there are certain areas, like New Orleans, Houston, Galveston, where a big storm surge would cause dollar damage in excess of the wind. Whereas in Miami, the storm surge only penetrates Miami Beach and the immediate waterfront area on the bay, and the rest of it is wind damage. For example, Andrew [in 1992] was primarily a wind-damage storm.

Homeland1: That high variability in storm-surge damage, that's due primarily to the local topography?

Read: Exactly. It's an oceanographic effect. The undersea continental shelf, the depth of the water immediately offshore, how fast the ground level slopes to higher elevations once you reach shore, all of those play a role, as does how you've built into the area, as to who gets flooded or not.

Homeland1: So it's not just the onshore topography, it's also the littoral topography. 

Read: Right. The continental shelf and the depth of the water immediately offshore are key factors in the response to storm surge. The wider and shallower your continental shelf is — like the Gulf of Mexico — the worse the storm surge can be. Off the Yucatan, there's a deep oceanic trench and very little shelf, and that's why you don't get a big surge when the big hurricanes hit there. It's very complicated. 

One of the hardest things we have in the education process is educating communities on that. Whereas I can say "120mph winds will do this, this and this" and give that talk anywhere, with storm surge, you have to localize it to the situation at hand, in the communities that you're talking to.

The second half of this interview will appear on Homeland1.com next week.