What I think would be helpful is to see some different hurricane models to try to understand what the temporal and spatial variations in the wind fields should be, and see if the observations out there a) are reasonably consistent with some model and B) allow inferences to be made about the unmeasured parts of the hurricane that corroborate the max intensity forecasts/estimates. Ie, make some attempt at verifying the hurricane forecasts.
Another thing I want to know more about is: how reliable are the observations themselves? How reliable are the wind measurements made by buoys and dropsondes? How reliable are satellite-based intensity estimates? What methods are available and what efforts have been made to determine these things?
Lastly, are we getting the right forecast products? Everyone seems to fixate so strongly on the max sustained winds, but it seems that in most cases these winds affect very few people. It might be more relevant to have some sort of wind/probability distribution graphic, where you can see the max wind speeds specific locations are likely to experience - maybe the state of forecasting doesn't yet permit this, but there has to be a better way to get people focused on a realistic expectation of what can happen in their areas.
-Brian
