Dave Kaplow
EF4
Lately we've seen an awful lot of storms that have weakened significantly immediately before landfall, much more than chance alone can account for, or so it seems to me. I think there may be something else at work here, perhaps several somethings all contributing together, above and beyond the usual ERC fluctuations one expects to find in a major huricane at sea. We are going to have to understand this pre-landfall burst of weakening, and maybe factor it into future forecasts. Of course one should never assume that a major storm will weaken right before landfall - better to be safe than sorry, after all - but if meteorologists want to keep the public's faith in them high, I believe they are going to have to come up with some sort of explanation for why this keeps happening. Just repeating the mantra of "random fluctuations" is not going to be enough, I suspect.