Hurricane modellers got it wrong last weekend, when hurricane Charley swerved right at the last minute, unexpectedly intensified and devastated the town of Punta Gorda on Florida’s west coast. “It’s very humbling,” says meteorologist John Kaplan of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Hurricane Research Division in Miami, who develops models for predicting hurricane intensity. “Sometimes you just want to throw up your hands and say ‘Jeez, I don’t know’.”
With winds of about 230 kilometres per hour, Charley killed at least 20 people and injured many others. It was classified as a category 4 hurricane, and was the worst…
