Here’s a 2011 TEDx talk by Jeff Masters from The Weather Underground titled “The 9 biggest weather disasters of the next 30 years.”
I’ve embedded the section on a hurricane hitting New York (If you’re reading this on an RSS Reader, you will have to click through). You can learn about his other predictions by watching the entire eighteen minute video here.
“The Person Who Predicted Sandy’s Damage — In 2011”
I think that the average casual reader would interpret the above headline as someone predicting – in 2011 – that a Sandyesque hurricane would hit NYC in 2012.
Given the five-foot seawalld and other inadequate protedtion and global warming and likelihood of a Sandyesque hurricane hitting NYC, it seems that the world “inevitability” is much more applicable than “prediction.”
In that the talk was entitled “The 9 biggest weather disasters of the next 30 years,” His prediction was that a Sandyesque hurricane would hit NYC in the next 30 years, not at all that great a predictive stretch. For certain, sometime soon, such a hurricane or typhoon or cyclone, or big earthquake, is going to hit somewhere on and in the Earth.
Agreeing with Onan and taking this one step further: The probability of someone making a prediction regarding a hurricane hitting NYC over a specific interval is probably close to 1. This far different than a specific person making said prediction which is probably closer to 0 (depending on the size of the interval of course).