Lixion Avila

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Dr. Lixion Avila is a weather forecaster with the National Hurricane Center (NHC). He has been a senior hurricane specialist there since 1987 and is the longest-tenured senior specialist.

He is the only Cuban-American specialist on the staff and 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 or sense of humor, often 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 the last advisory of the long-lived Hurricane Kyle of 2002, he expressed that "I hope there will be no more surprises." [2]
• For Hurricane Ivan (2004), when remnants of the storm reformed into a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico, he noted that the decision to name it "Ivan" was "after considerable and sometimes animated in-house discussion of the demise of Ivan...while debate will surely continue here and elsewhere". [3]
• In an interview 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]
• 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]
• As 2005's Tropical Storm Zeta continued to persist into January 2006, "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]
• For Tropical Storm Juliette (2007), he said "If some of the dynamical models have their way...Juliette could meet her less-than-Shakespearean demise sooner than indicated in the official forecast". [8]