Latest news with #jane
Forbes
10-08-2025
- Climate
- Forbes
AI Predicts An East Coast Hurricane Soon - 3 Reasons For Caution
If you have any type of social media account, you may have seen some random 'jane' or 'joe' sharing long-range projections about a hurricane approaching the U.S. East Coast in the next two weeks. A global AI-based model has been particularly bullish on this scenario. The month of August marks the ramp-period of the Atlantic hurricane season, so I thought it would be valuable to provide three reasons why you should consume that forecast with a grain of salt right now. Before I provide context on what the AI models and others are showing right now, it is useful to set the stage. The Atlantic basin is starting to light up with tropical activity. And it should be. The main development region typically starts to feature more tropical wave and thunderstorm clusters as we move through the month of August. Current satellite imagery shows several potential candidates for the next named storm, Erin. What The AI Model Shows Right Now Models are sniffing out the possibility that one of those waves coming off of the African coast will develop further. A European AI model system has been particularly aggressive with its outlook. On July 1, 2025, the European Centre For Medium-Range Weather Forecasts announced that the ensemble version of the Artificial Intelligence Forecasting System (AIFS) became operational. It is being run along with ECMWF's more familiar 'Euro' model system, which is a physics-based Integrated Forecasting System (IFS). According to an ECMWF press release, 'The ensemble version, called AIFS ENS, is a collection of 51 different forecasts with slight variations at any given time to provide the full range of possible scenarios.' The map above shows deterministic predictions from the standard ECMWF, American GFS, and ECMWF-AIFS for the morning of August 21, 2025. Let's break down three things about these very different forecasts. 3 Reasons To Be Cautious With These Predictions Right Now There are several important cautions here. First, this forecast is still 11-days out at the time of writing. Credible meteorologists caution against anchoring to model outcomes in the ten-to-fourteen day range. A 2019 Pennsylvania State University study found that the 10-day threshold is where model skill starts to degrade. One caveat is that study focused on traditional physics-based models in which complex mathematical equations are solved to resolve how the atmospheric fluid evolves in time. AI-based models operate differently. While operating at coarser resolution (31 km) than the traditional system (9 km), ECMWF noted, 'The new ensemble model outperforms state-of-the-art physics-based models for many measures, including surface temperature, with gains of up to 20%.' At the moment, it works at a lower resolution (31 km) than the physics-based ensemble system (9 km), which remains indispensable for high-resolution fields and coupled Earth-system processes. Second, the AI model system has a hurricane near the U.S. East Coast on that date. The American GFS has nothing at all, and the standard European system has a storm well off the coast. This looming system will be an early test for the AIFS ENS, which according to ECMFW, 'Relies on physics-based data assimilation to generate the initial conditions…. Can generate forecasts over 10 times faster than the physics-based forecasting system, while reducing energy consumption by approximately 1,000 times.' Last year, AI-based models outperformed some traditional ones with landfall location or lead-time associated with Hurricane Beryl and Hurricane Francine. Third, I only showed a deterministic 'average' solution, but I did so for a teachable moment. Many 'social mediarologists' (and some trained meteorologists) post such cherry-picked solutions all of the time. In reality, if you look at the ensemble spread of the solutions right now, even the AI scenarios still have a wide range of track or intensity possibilities. In the post below found on the platform X, you see the actual spread of the ensemble members on August 8, 2025. As a reminder, the NWS glossary defined an ensemble forecast as, 'Multiple predictions from an ensemble of slightly different initial conditions and/or various versions of models…. Objectives are to improve the accuracy of the forecast through averaging the various forecasts, which eliminates non-predictable components, and to provide reliable information on forecast uncertainties from the diversity amongst ensemble members.' I showed single deterministic runs in this article to make a point. However, if you see someone post one on social media, especially beyond 10 days, and make wild claims, you should be cautiously skeptical.
Buzz Feed
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
21 Strange Childhood Behaviors Many Of Us Have Done
Children can be sooo quirky. Some have super active imaginations, others are just funky little explorers. And many, (myself included!) are doing some weirdddddd stuff (shoutout to the weirdos, though!! this post is Team-Weird-Kid!!). So here are 21 genuinely odd (but perhaps relatable) things people did when they were kids: "I used to pretend I was a music video when riding in the backseat and it was raining." —medusssaaa "I would walk around the house and try to do everyday things with my eyes closed in case I ever went blind." "I would kiss my teddy bears goodnight, and if I accidentally kissed one twice, I'd have to kiss them all again so they didn't feel left out." —avysowavy "I used to imagine the death of someone who was very much still alive and cry about it." "Everything had feelings. If I had a favorite clothing item, I would never say it out loud, because I didn't want my clothes to be sad." —itsellerzz "I would prepare funeral speeches for each of my family members and would cry while reciting them in my head before bed." "I would practice breathing as quietly as I could in case I ever had to hide for my life." — "I used to pretend I was dead and float in our pool to see if anyone would save me." "I ate a lot of Chapstick." —spacesuitnotneeded "I thought that for every song played on the radio, the artist had to come into the studio and sing it every single time it was played." "I used to wipe my boogers on the wall." —iodesuu "I refused to look down at my body while I was showering just in case my classmates figured out a way to spy on me through my own eyes." "I had a notebook where I kept a list of people who were 'mean to me.' I called it my 'revenge planner.' It had glitter stickers." —jane_ng21 "I would pray every night for everyone's safety, and if I mentioned a specific person by name, I then had to pray individually for everyone else, too. And I truly believed if I left out someone or forgot someone, something bad would happen to them." "I used to think the people on TV actually LIVED inside the TV, so I would leave snacks behind the TV for them." —mirandasuewho "I thought I controlled the clouds." "I used to stare at a Barbie doll and say, 'I know you're alive, please move so I can make sure! I won't tell anybody!' FOR SO LONG BELIEVING IT WOULD MOVE!!" —nikoletta_vg "I would eat cereal in pairs so no piece would go down alone." "I would watch movies to fall asleep, and when the copyright warnings would pop up I'd close my eyes because I was convinced I'd go to jail if I didn't." —noellemariana__ "I would curl up on the floor to try to 'survive' without my bed to prove how tough I was. I would sleep on a tiny doll blanket and that was it." And lastly, "I used to pretend that my crush could see me at all times, as if a camera was following me everywhere, and I would imagine what he would think. It would consume my every waking moment." —kaceehenson There you have it, 21 deeply quirky childhood behaviors. Did you do any of these? Or did you exhibit any other childhood idiosyncrasies of your own? Let us know in the comments.
