Lixion Avila

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Dr. Lixion Avila is a weather forecaster with the National Hurricane Center. He has been a senior hurricane specialist there since 1987; he is the longest tenured senior specialist.

He is the only Cuban-American specialist on the staff. He is bilingual in English and Spanish.

Avila generally forecasts with a quirky personal touch. Similar to his NHC counterpart Dr. James Franklin, Avila occasionally expresses his opinion, and sometimes his sense of humor, in the discussion areas of advisories. For example:

• When forecasting Tropical Storm Dolly in 2002, Avila said "The bell just rang in the Tropical Atlantic... Hello Dolly..." [1]
• For Hurricane Kyle in 2002, he said "I hope there will be no more surprises." [2]
• For Hurricane Ivan (2004), when remnants of the storm suddenly reformed into a tropical storm, he said "after considerable and sometimes animated in-house discussion of the demise of Ivan" before announcing that the new storm would retain the Ivan name "while debate will surely continue here and elsewhere". [3]
• For Hurricane Wilma (2005), he said "First of all, I could not believe it. Nobody in their right mind would have expected this drop in pressure." [4] (this was during an interview, not an advisory discussion)
• For Hurricane Epsilon (2005), he said "There are no clear reasons, and I am not going to make one up, to explain the recent strengthening of Epsilon." [5]
• For Tropical Storm Zeta (2005-06), he said "As you can see...I ran out [of] things to say." [6]
• For Hurricane Ernesto (2006), he said "Since neither I nor the [forecast] models are good enough to precisely know if Ernesto will have an intensity of 64 knots at landfall...which is the border between hurricane and tropical storm intensity and 4 knots above the forecast...a hurricane watch has been issued for a portion of the coast". [7]