NOAA Aims to Improve Storm Intensity Forecasts

Hurricane researchers say they've gotten very good at predicting the path of a hurricane. They're now as accurate at 48 hours before landfall as they used to be at 24 hours.

But in predicting the intensity of a storm … there's been almost no progress in the last 15 years.

Shirley Murillo is a hurricane research meteorologist with NOAA. She
says she has great hopes for the Doppler radar on the tales of the P3 aircraft used in hurricane tracking.

"It sort of provides a Cat scan of the storm; it gives us the wind structure which is important in how the storm is changing and evolving and therefore giving us a hint of the intensity of the storm."

Murillo said the information would also be making it back to forecasters much more quickly: The Doppler radar data will be now sent in real time to forecasters on the ground.