Hurricane Season 2025: When the Internet storm is worse than the real thing
A leading weather model looked 10 days into the future in the waning days of May and forecast in angry swirls of reds and oranges a large hurricane hitting Florida on June 10, 2025.
Meteorologists on social media cautioned about the lack of accuracy in forecasting something that far out and noted the storm-friendly bias of the GFS, or American Global Forecast System, that tends to be more aggressive early in the season in spinning up tropical cyclones.
But some images of the 'fantasycane' made it onto social media, with one hurricane expert saying he saw a Facebook page with 250,000 followers that showed the storm hitting Florida. Other posts on X showed images of the storm on GFS without much context on why the model may be flawed.
'They just don't have the experience to know what is valid and what's not,' said Andy Hazelton, an associate scientist at the University of Miami's Cooperative Institute for Marine & Atmospheric Studies. 'The data from NOAA is freely available and I think that's the best approach, but it does create some problems in the social media era.'
The National Hurricane Center never identified what the GFS was seeing as an area of concern. June 10 came and went with no tropical storm or hurricane anywhere in the Atlantic basin.
Social media evolved in the decade-long landfall lull between 2005's record-breaking hurricane season and 2016's Hurricane Hermine, which broke the respite when it reached Florida's big Bend region as a Category 1 storm.
Hurricane season 2025: New forecast calls for above normal season but questions remain
Emergency managers and meteorologists have learned to use the ever-expanding medium to reach the masses. They plead with people in hurricane-prone areas to follow official sources during storm season.
That includes your local National Weather Service forecasting office, the National Hurricane Center, your county emergency manager, Florida's Emergency Response Team and your local TV meteorologist.
'Hurricane season has gotten too commercial and there are many bad actors out there trying to profit from scaring people,' said Ryan Truchelut, chief meteorologist and president of the forecasting service WeatherTiger in a June 4 column. 'My philosophy is that reality is plenty frightening, which is why I don't talk about extreme, unrealistic scenarios like what the GFS has been showing.'
Hazleton said the GFS model can have trouble during June and October — seasonal transition periods that bookend hurricane season. Early in the season, heavy rainfall and thunderstorms near Central America can get magnified by the GFS, which then combines that with spin coming off the Venezuelan mountains and produces 'essentially fake hurricanes.'
It can also misdiagnose the strength of the Bermuda high, sending storms farther north than what really happens.
Hazleton said he's also concerned about the amount of irrelevant or unnecessary information thrown at people online so that forecasts become white noise, making it hard for people to distinguish when a storm is a legitimate threat.
More: Two decades later, 2004 is remembered as the 'mean season' as hurricanes shredded Florida
Another debate that pops up every hurricane season is which track model, or spaghetti model, people should follow when a storm is approaching. Is the Euro better than the GFS this season? That was something lay people never dealt with before the Internet made them so widely available.
Fox Weather hurricane specialist Bryan Norcross addressed the issue in a 2024 hurricane forum hosted by The Palm Beach Post.
'The bottom line is the National Hurricane Center forecast is better than any model,' Norcross said. 'The spaghetti models are decoration, but they don't give you the best information. The NHC gives you the best information.'
Palm Beach County Emergency Management, @PBCDEM
Palm Beach County School District, @PBCSD
South Florida Water Management District, @SFWMD
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, @GOVERONDESANTIS
Florida State Emergency Response Team, @FLSERT
Florida Department of Transportation, @FL511_STATE
National Weather Service Miami, @NWSMIAMI
National Hurricane Center, @NHC_ATLANTIC
National Hurricane Center Storm Surge, @NHC_SURGE
National Hurricane Center social media sites: https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/socialmedia/
Kimberly Miller is a journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network of Florida. She covers real estate, weather, and the environment. Subscribe to The Dirt for a weekly real estate roundup. If you have news tips, please send them to kmiller@pbpost.com. Help support our local journalism, subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Follow official sources on social media during hurricane season
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