WOTY candidate: "spaghetti model"

[Garson O'Toole]

Laurence Horn wrote:
> Not a model who's as thin as spaghetti, or one who eats
> it, but one of the models of the possible tracks for Hurricane
> Irene as it proceeds up the East Coast.

There is a website that displays "Spaghetti Plots & Charts" for
hurricanes called spaghettimodels.com. The name was registered in
2006, but the website may have been used for some other purpose in the
past:
Domain Name.......... spaghettimodels.com
  Creation Date........ 2006-08-31
  Registration Date.... 2006-08-31

Mike's Weather Page
Spaghetti Models Plots:
Updated Computer Models / Spaghetti Plots & Charts

Google Books has a volume with an unverified 2008 date that uses
"spaghetti models" to refer to the display of information from
computer models of hurricanes.

Title   The social construction of a special needs program for hurricanes
Authors Robert E. Tabler (Jr), University of South Florida
Publisher       ProQuest, 2008

According to Participant 13, the new radar being used by the weather
stations, are really good at showing where a storm is going. He also
thinks that the spaghetti models are “confusing as hell” and that the
cone model is easier to follow.
<end excerpt>

GB has earlier examples of "spaghetti models" referring to computer
models and computer programs, but the instances I quickly looked at
were not connected to representing hurricane tracks.

Garson

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org