Report: The Eagles and Redskins Will Play on Sunday Because The Hurricane Is Probably Going Out To Sea

Stormcast: Meh?

Jason La Canfora reports that the Eagles and Redskins will play this weekend, and they won’t be changing home dates, according to (@MfrankNFL). Why? New spaghetti plots are out, and if you’re a football fan, they look delicious:

As you can see, the storm can go basically anywhere, but the vast majority of those tasty, homemade, gravy-covered plots have Joaquin heading out to sea. This essentially means it has a much higher probability of doing so. But the National Weather Service uses their CONE OF UNCERTAINTY, which sort of sounds like an area somewhere between fuck buddies and friend zone, and it essentially takes a range of plots and, based on recent accuracy, outlines the most likely boundaries, which leaves you with what looks like a more predictable path:

The Washington Post has a great article explaining why this isn’t the best way to forecast Joaquin:

But surprisingly, the size of the National Hurricane Center’s cone of uncertainty — the cone that surrounds the main track line and gives a range of possibilities for the storm’s future path — is not determined by the specific forecast uncertainty for that particular storm. Instead, it represents an average track error over the past five years. As the forecasts get better each year, the cone shrinks, but it is also fixed in size for each storm that year, with no regard for whether the forecast is high- or low-confidence.

This is a low-confidence storm, as evidenced by the tasty spaghetti plots. In fact, almost none of them take the storm directly up the center of the CONE OF UNCERTAINTY– rather, they branch off far west or far east. Most recent reports seem to indicate an eastward – out to sea – path is more likely. Hence, the Eagles will take flight.