I met the meteorologist who forecast Michael to make landfall at 90MPH. He said that there was a range of error of 70MPH. He explained why he felt like it was going to be on the lower end. It went something like this. There was a trough of highly favorable conditions about 50 miles broad. The steering elements are easier to accurately predict than the intensity elements. The storm was not supposed to move along that trough. They were only off by a little on the track, but that little mattered a lot relative to the favorable conditions for intensification.
the weather service and the private sector weather forecasters are going to have to continue their development of the cray super computers or something like that.
plenty of people with masters and ph.d degrees in weather, meteorology, atmospheric chemistry and physics, but the fact is the weather just keeps on coming.
