Improved technology has saved countless lives during hurricanes. And researchers are still trying to find ways to better pinpoint the tracks of hurricanes. This was one of the main topics at a meeting held by the Gulf States Alliance at the Beau Rivage Monday.
Top researchers from Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi universities are joining forces at the Gulf States Alliance Conference.
"A lot of the focus of today's discussion is what are the fundamental things of science we need to do to insure that we're better able to handle the picture of hurricanes that we know will come to this region, and how can we avoid some of the mistakes we've made in the past? I think it takes some of these great scientists to really help us work through this through some sophisticated computational models," said Les Guice of Louisiana State University.
Chief Meteorologist Mike Reader has been using cutting edge technology to keep up with the track of Hurricane Dean. He's glad the area's top researchers are working together. Reader believes there are plenty of improvements that can be made when it comes to storm tracking.
"I think the most important thing these universities can do is work with the national hurricane Center to improve the storm surge forecast. It's been proven time and time again, that the killer in a hurricane is water, being it the inland flooding or the storm surge," Reader said.
Ed Seidel, the Director for Computation and Technology at Louisiana State University agrees.
"The main thing is to get the academic institutions to cooperate and work together on problems that are really problems to our region, like coastal storm surge forecasting, hurricane forecasting," he said.
And that, Seidel says, is just what they're doing.
Publish Date:
08-21-2007
