Mississippi College Develops Hurricane Model

Isaac is giving a team at Jackson State University the opportunity to test a tracking model that can predict a storm’s path with accuracy comparable to the National Weather Service.

The National Weather Service predicts storms’ paths using real time data.

The director of JSU’s Trent Lott Geospatial and Visualization Research Center tells The Clarion-Ledger the JSU model takes a statistical approach using about 100 years’ worth of historical data, including the previous paths of storms and the conditions that contributed to those storms.

The predicted path can be updated every two minutes, which is faster than models used by the National Weather Service.

The model is the brain child of visiting professor Venkata Dodla, a meteorologist and hurricane expert at JSU.