Fit Hits Shan at the National Hurricane Center

I've barely even met newly installed National Hurricane Center director Bill Proenza. I shook his hand at the National Hurricane Conference last April in New Orleans, and at the American Meteorological Society meeting last January in San Antonio, I asked him a question about hurricanes and global warming at a press conference, which he answered respectably (if cautiously). All in all, he seemed like a nice enough and more than competent guy. Moreover, when Proenza started speaking out about how NOAA was underfunding his center and not planning adequately to save the ailing QuikSCAT satellite, I was instinctively impressed by this guy who seemed so willing to, in the famous phrase, "speak truth to power." Now, however, a meltdown has occurred at the hurricane center, and we learn for the first time that many of the top forecasters--including one I interviewed for the book, Richard Pasch, and another that I ...