On Tuesday morning, reliable forecasters predicted that a tropical storm named Helene, just south of Cuba, would intensify in the coming days and almost certainly hit Florida as a hurricane on Thursday.

This is when we all like to stare at cones and “spaghetti models” showing possible paths as the storm approaches, but from the outset: Be careful how you notoriously misunderstand this information.

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NOAA’s cone graph of storm Helene

According to NOAA, a hurricane warning is in effect as of 11 a.m. ET for much of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, the Cuban province of Pinar del Rio, a swath of Florida stretching from “Englewood to Indian Pass” and densely populated Tampa Bay. Here’s what it looks like in graphic form:

NOAA’s cone graph of Tropical Storm Helene shows the threats to parts of Mexico, Cuba and Florida.
Credit: NOAA

As a reminder, NOAA’s cone graph is a fairly reliable prediction of the range of the paths that the center of the storm can take. The cone is not — as it might at first appear — a forecast of a widening storm exploding inland across the United States. High winds and storm surge can, and likely will, occur outside the cone, and some areas within the cone will emerge completely unscathed from the storm.

If you’re reading this and it turns out you’re directly in the path of a hurricane, an evacuation order would be hard to miss. At this point, rather than speculating about whether your particular neighborhood will experience the high winds and storm surge that come with a direct hurricane, it’s wiser in most areas to simply heed NOAA’s general warning:

Heavy rains are likely to cause significant localized flooding in parts of Florida. Isolated and urban flooding is also possible in the Southeast, southern Appalachians and the Tennessee Valley from Wednesday through Friday.

Spaghetti model for Helene

Spaghetti models, such as the NOAA cone model, visualize mathematical possibilities.

Unlike the cone, they represent the actual paths predicted by a collection of computer models, all of which fall out like spaghetti from Strega Nona’s magic pasta pot. And like the cone, the spaghetti model can be misleading. All of the paths in the spaghetti model are both speculative and contradictory. The actual storm will follow only one path, and it is almost certain that none of the predicted paths in this splatter of noodles will be perfectly predictive.

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

Predicted outlier events usually don’t come to pass. But events also don’t match averages of predictions. While top-notch weather models can be astonishingly accurate, weather just happens, and its precise schedule is, and always will be, totally odd, thanks to the incalculable number of small natural and man-made factors that contribute to outcomes.