the forecasting models behind the power outages forecasts for Hurricane Sandy

I’m thrilled to have interviewed Seth Guikema about his forecasting models for hurricane power outages between his gigs on Good Morning America and Bloomberg. Seth is a professor at Johns Hopkins University, and he is the rock star of hurricane power outage forecasts. I wrote about a Baltimore Sun article about his research not too long ago. On the podcast, he and I chat about the methodologies he uses in his models as well as how news sources like to turn scientific research into digestible sound bites.

Listen here: (or go directly to the mp3 here)

You can listen to the episode below or you can go to the podcast web page (where you can download to iTunes, etc.) and feed. I recommend subscribing to the feed or going directly to the Punk Rock OR Podcast iTunes page, but you can also find the podcast episodes on this blog by clicking on “Podcast” under “Categories” in the left column.

Seth’s models have gotten a lot of coverage. Here are a few places where you can see Seth’s work translated for a general lay audience:

•  The Atlantic Cities
• Huffington Post
• Christian Science Monitor
• MSNBC

Seth’s forecasts as of 6am on 10/29:

Power outage forecasts for Hurricane Sandy (courtesy of Seth Guikema)