Since Tuesday morning, reliable weather forecasters have said that a violent tropical storm named Helene south of Cuba will increase in intensity over the next few days and will almost certainly reach Florida as a hurricane on Thursday.

Now is the time when we all like to stare at cones and “spaghetti models” that indicate possible paths of the approaching storm, but right at the start: Please be careful how you use this notoriously misunderstood Information.

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NOAA’s cone graphic of Storm Helene

According to NOAA, a hurricane warning has been in effect since 11 a.m. ET for large parts of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, the Cuban province of Pinar del Rio, a strip of Florida between Englewood and Indian Pass, and the densely populated Tampa Bay. In graphic form, this looks like this:

NOAA’s cone graphic of Tropical Storm Helene shows the threat to parts of Mexico, Cuba and Florida.
Photo credit: NOAA

As a reminder, the NOAA cone graph is a fairly reliable prediction of the range of paths, Center of the storm The cone is not, as it might seem at first glance, a prediction of an ever-widening storm exploding into the interior of the United States. Outside the cone, severe winds and storm surge can and probably will occur, and some areas within the cone will survive the storm completely unscathed.

If you’re reading this and it turns out you’re directly in the path of a hurricane, an evacuation order will be hard to miss. Rather than speculate on whether your specific neighborhood will be exposed to the high winds and storm surge that a direct hurricane brings, in most areas it would be wiser to simply heed NOAA’s more general warning:

Heavy rainfall is expected to cause significant localized flash flooding across much of Florida. Isolated flash flooding and urban flooding are possible in the Southeast, southern Appalachians, and Tennessee Valley from Wednesday through Friday.

Spaghetti model for Helene

Spaghetti models like the NOAA cone model visualize mathematical possibilities.

Unlike the cone, they represent the actual paths predicted by a series of computer models, all spilling out like spaghetti from Strega Nona’s magic pasta pot. And like the cone, the spaghetti model can be deceptive. All of the paths in the spaghetti model are both speculative and contradictory to each other. The actual storm will follow only one path, and it is almost certain that none of the predicted paths in that pasta mush will be perfectly predictable.

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The model above, posted online by Baton Rouge meteorologist Malcolm Byron, appears to show about 20 possible paths, with a particularly threatening spaghetti strand in the far east hitting Tampa Bay directly. Such outliers should be viewed with caution by the public.

Predicted outlier events usually don’t happen. But events also don’t match the averages of forecasts. Although cutting-edge weather models can be astonishingly accurate, weather just happens, and its exact pattern remains completely alien due to the incalculable number of tiny natural and man-made factors that contribute to the outcomes.