This made it into the National Hurricane Center’s advisory system tonight:
000
WTNT21 KNHC 130150
TCMAT1TROPICAL STORM OPHELIA FORECAST/ADVISORY NUMBER 27
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL162005
0300Z TUE MAY 12 2008AT 11 PM EDT…0300Z…A HURRICANE WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED FROM THE
SOUTH SANTEE RIVER SOUTH CAROLINA TO CAPE LOOKOUT NORTH CAROLINA.AT 11 PM EDT…A TROPICAL STORM WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED FROM NORTH
OF CAPE LOOKOUT TO OREGON INLET NORTH CAROLINA…INCLUDING PAMLICO
SOUND.A TROPICAL STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM NORTH OF EDISTO
BEACH SOUTH CAROLINA TO THE SOUTH SANTEE RIVER.A HURRICANE WARNING MEANS THAT HURRICANE CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED IN
THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS.A TROPICAL STORM WARNING MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE
EXPECTED IN THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS.TROPICAL STORM CENTER LOCATED NEAR 31.8N 77.9W AT 13/0300Z
POSITION ACCURATE WITHIN 15 NMPRESENT MOVEMENT TOWARD THE WEST-NORTHWEST OR 290 DEGREES AT 3 KT
ESTIMATED MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE 990 MB
EYE DIAMETER 90 NM
MAX SUSTAINED WINDS 60 KT WITH GUSTS TO 75 KT.
50 KT……. 70NE 70SE 70SW 70NW.
34 KT…….140NE 120SE 120SW 120NW.
12 FT SEAS..250NE 240SE 225SW 180NW.
WINDS AND SEAS VARY GREATLY IN EACH QUADRANT. RADII IN NAUTICAL
MILES ARE THE LARGEST RADII EXPECTED ANYWHERE IN THAT QUADRANT.REPEAT…CENTER LOCATED NEAR 31.8N 77.9W AT 13/0300Z
AT 13/0000Z CENTER WAS LOCATED NEAR 31.9N 77.7W
It’s an old advisory for Hurricane Ophelia in 2005 that has apparently been re-dated for today, and it’s causing some minor chaos right now. It’s showing up in my Hurricane Advisory RSS feed, but now some of the automated systems that take in these advisories and warn on them are going nuts. I first noticed when BreakingNewsOn on Twitter started reporting a hurricane bearing down on North Carolina. Similarly, local blogger Matthew Gregg noted the error in a tweet shortly after the BreakingNewsOn tweet. Following the link in Matthew’s tweet took me to the errant advisory listed above. Since then, though, this has made it out to sites like Reuters and the UK’s Tropical Storm Risk center.
I can assure everybody that there is no tropical storm out there, and I hope that this isn’t reaching even further than just these locations. I haven’t seen any false warnings being raised here, which is a good thing. Hopefully NHC will get this out of their news stream quickly.
EPILOGUE: Here’s a Post & Courier piece by Dan Conover about the errant advisory. Interesting how it all went down.
Discussion of Epic National Hurricane Center FAIL is now closed
Yeah… I noticed it too, and spent 45 minutes debating BreakingNewsOn that it was an errant advisory.
I think I finally sealed it for them when I sent them a link to the origional advisory right alongside the errant one.
http://kcweather.org/Ophelia.txt
It could have been a test. More likely and error with NOAA Ops (not really the NHC). These types of things have happened before. Reuters auto-posted the advisory, BreakingNewsOn took it as something real. Still, rather poor research on something of that magnitude… a trend that shows up more and more in news organizations lately.
Yep, I did the same thing and directed them to examine the satellite. A quick examination of the IR satellite would have clearly indicated the lack of a hurricane sitting roughly parallel to Charleston.
I remember Ophelia, that was kind of a funny storm. Left clouds here but not much else.
A test is plausible, but don’t they usually issue some sort of statement ahead of time saying they’re going to test? Either way somebody is not going to have a good time at work tomorrow
Maybe somebody pressed the wrong button somewhere, or the high winds and rain, mixed with tornadoes was a little more like hurricane conditions than the handful of warnings out there. Perhaps Severe T-Storm, Tornado, and Flash Flood warnings combined are equal to hurricane conditions.
I called the National Hurricane Center. They said it was a test being run at the NWS office in Morehead City, NC. According to the NHC guy, the test “accidentally went out into the world.” Hence, it’s a 2005 advisory with May 2008 dates added in.