Hey Mike, thanks for posting! Wow/scarey!

 But there’s good reason to hope that this April CSU forecast is going to end up too high based on past very active April CSU predictions. They’ve been making April predictions since 1995. I see a pretty clear pattern when they’ve gone very active in April:

1. # NS: They’re predicting 23. Prior to this the highest they predicted in April was 17-19 (five times). Four of those five progs ended up too high. For those 5, they averaged 2.8 too high.

2. NS days: They’re predicting 115. Prior to this the highest they predicted in April was 85-95 (four times). All four of those progs ended up too high. The highest actual of these four was only 58 and they averaged a whopping 40.5 too high!

3. # H: They’re predicting 11. The prior highest predicted in April was 9 (six times). All of those 6 progs ended up too high by an average of 3.

4. H days: They’re predicting 45. The prior highest progs in April were 40-45 (five times). Of these five, four progs came in too high. The five averaged a whopping 19 too high!

5. # MH: They’re predicting 5, which they’ve predicted three other times in April. All three of those progs came in too high by an average of 2.33.

6. MH days: They’re predicting 13, which is tied for the highest ever predicted in April. They’ve progged 10-13 five times. Of those five, three progs were too high. The five averaged 3.25 too high.

7. ACE: They’re predicting 210. The prior highest April progs were 160-183 (five times). Of these five, all progs ended up too high with even the closest being 34 too high! The five averaged a whopping 85.8 too high!

Conclusion: If I were a betting man, I’d short CSU’s April ‘24’s forecast overall, especially NS Days, # H, and ACE.

Holy Cow Larry! 

Thanks for those incredible stats! Where did you get them, please. 

I wonder if they're being impacted, like almost everybody else(including scientists) in exaggerating/sensationalizing everything related to the weather/climate?

Last year, I went a bit higher than they did from the warm ocean temps, which countered the typical El Nino suppression. I don't have the skill or additional information to adjust from their forecast this year but your stats are very compelling. 

This year, the rapid return of La Nina(causes less hurricane suppression) with the warm tropical Atlantic are expected to work together.  There's no good reason to think otherwise. 

Great presentation here:

This Hurricane Season will be Dominated by La Niña...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu1mvheVVHc

Ryan Hall Y'all's tornado season forecast. Great presentation.

I don't even try to forecast a tornado season because they are such low skilled, often non productive, sometimes misleading endeavor's but will cover the patterns and actual events very closely.

This Tornado Season Will Be VERY Different...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcS12SsftMs

Mike said:

 “Holy Cow Larry! 

Thanks for those incredible stats! Where did you get them, please.

I wonder if they're being impacted, like almost everybody else(including scientists) in exaggerating/sensationalizing everything related to the weather/climate?“

—————

Hey Mike,

I don’t think CSU is trying to sensationalize. I fully respect their objectivity, knowledge, analytical abilities, and clear communication showing how they derived their numbers. I can see the reasoning in going so high when looking at the recent past and considering how ridiculously warm the Atlantic is in combo with the expectation for a moderate+ La Niña. Thus I still think the season will be very active even if this April CSU forecast ends up being a bit too bullish.

 Stats came from here:

https://www.storm2k.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=123895&start=80#p3062917

Wonderful source, Larry!

Maybe sensationalizing is the wrong word........and I don't want to give the impression of not respecting this source because I greatly respect them.

 They do have justification to give those huge numbers but I'm surprised that a conservative entity would be going this extreme so early.

They have only OVER forecast (named storms) based on your stats 8 times since 1995 with a tendency to UNDER forecast, which they did 20 times(the other time was exactly right).

Seeing their actual forecasts and comparing them to reality also sheds light on your first post. You are only using  their highest forecasts and comparing them to what happened and not ALL their forecasts.

In fact, if you look at the graph below, of the 8 highest seasons of named storms, they UNDER forecast all 8 years.

If there's one feature that stands out on the graph below, it's that CSU misses all anomalously high/spikes in activity. So the graph below tells a completely different story than your worded analysis. 

https://www.storm2k.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=123895&start=80#p3062917

Hey Mike,

 Yes, I wasn’t trying to say they’ve ended up too bullish on average with their April forecasts overall as they, indeed, have actually averaged too bearish with them as you just showed. For ALL 29 April forecasts, their # of NS averaged 2.7 too low. It is only when they’ve been their most bullish in April that they’ve averaged too bullish (i.e., 2.8 too high). Interesting dichotomy.

I get that, Larry.

But any entity will always be the highest vs what really happened when you take ONLY their highest forecasts....and this is their highest ever. 

There is value in what you state but with perspective.

Put another way.  I would never expect all their highest projections to be too low. Their lowest projections are almost all too low and this does increase the chance for a low prediction to be too low. But in that case, they actually have an overall tendency of being too low in general.

This extremely high prediction from them gets a tremendous amount of attention because of the significance.

You can bet that the anticipation by itself will continue to generate enormous, record smashing coverage/publicity. 

I'm sure that was not a factor for them consciously. They are most concerned with accuracy to:

1. Help people be prepared

2. The world will judge them forever based on their track record, which is are analyzing to death, like right now(which is a good thing).

3. It's possible that, knowing their own overly conservative predictions in the past(and this year's atmosphere/ocean), including last year they could have tried to adjust, like the sites of a gun that keeps hitting to the left of the target.......adjust to the right. That's speculation. Each year should be independent of previous years.

Mike said:

“But any entity will always be the highest vs what really happened when you take ONLY their highest forecasts....and this is their highest ever.”

——————————

Hey Mike,

 I don’t agree that an entity’s most bullish forecasts will always be the highest vs reality. Isn’t it possible for an entity’s most bullish forecasts to be too low? Maybe you misstated what you meant.

 Simplified hypothetical example. Let’s say an entity has been forecasting the # of NS for 10 years and that these 10 forecasts have been 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19. Taking what you said literally, their forecasts of 18 and 19 have to end up the highest vs reality (similar to how CSU’s April forecasts have ended up doing). I don’t think you really meant that. Am I correct?

 For example, the year with the 19 prediction could have ended up at, say, 30. The year with the 18 prediction could have ended up at, say 23. (In this example, very unlike how the most active April CSU forecasts did.) The year with the 11 could have ended up at, say, 9. The year with the 12 could have ended up at, say, 9. (Again, very unlike how the least active April CSU forecasts did.) In this hypothetical example, the two most bullish forecasts averaged 8 too low while the two most bearish forecasts ended up averaging 2.5 too high.

Thanks, Larry!

I do get your points, especially the last one. No use having a non productive conversation over word salad about something from the past that's pretty independent of the reality of this year.  

It's this year they will be judged by and what we should try to focus on. What they predicted 10 or 20 years ago doesn't really have a bearing on that. It's worth mentioning but shouldn't turn into the main topic.

Mike said:

“It's possible that, knowing their own overly conservative predictions in the past(and this year's atmosphere/ocean), including last year they could have tried to adjust, like the sites of a gun that keeps hitting to the left of the target.......adjust to the right. That's speculation. Each year should be independent of previous years.”

———-

Hey Mike,

 Excellent analogy with the gun site adjusting! It looks like to me that the CSU April forecasts may have a tendency to adjust the site too far to the right (more bullish) just after the site was much too far left or had several in a row that were too far left. Almost like an overreaction at times.

 Example with NS: Apr CSU in 2005 missed the actual of 28 by 15 too low, which is still their worst miss ever. In 2006, they predicted their then highest ever by far (17) after having predicted 13 the year before and no more than 14 before then. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were influenced bullishly in being 15 too low the year prior. The 06 actual ended up at only 10 and gave them a miss of 7 too high (still their largest miss too high to date). So, they went from their most bearish miss in 05 to their most bullish miss in 06. 

 Part of the reason they missed so high in Apr 06 was that as of then the latest model avg of ONI for ASO was only +0.2. It ended up being +0.5/already wk Nino.

Great points, Larry.

We'll see them adjust the number as we go along based on changing dynamics.