Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. had this great set of factoids up on his blog, and I just can’t resist sharing. He writes:
Adam Lea, of University College London, shares these interesting hurricane factoids related the the remarkable dearth of US hurricane landfalls in recent years. His comments are reproduced here with his permission:
As the 2010 hurricane season (with 10 hurricanes) starts to wind down I thought I would share a few statistics on how unusual this season has been historically for its lack of US hurricane landfalls:
1. Since 1900 there is no precedent of an Atlantic hurricane season with 10 or more hurricanes where none has struck the US as a hurricane. The five previous seasons with 10 or more hurricanes each had at least two hurricane strikes on the US.
2. The last precedent for a La Nina year of the magnitude of 2010 which had no US-landfalling hurricane is 1973.
3. Since hurricane Ike (2008) there have been 16 consecutive non US-landfalling hurricanes. Such a sequence last happened between Irene (1999) and Lili (2002) with 22 consecutive non US-landfalling hurricanes, and between Allen (1980) and Alicia (1983) with 17 consecutive non US-landfalling hurricanes.
4. The period 2006-2010 is one of only three 5-year consecutive periods without a US major hurricane landfall (the other two such periods were 1901-1905 and 1936-1940). There has never been a six year period without a US major hurricane landfall.
5. Historically one in four Atlantic hurricanes strike the US as a hurricane. Thus the recent dearth in strikes should be ‘corrected’ in the next few years.
Give him some traffic, comment here. Dr. Pielke adds in another post:
The 2006-2010 RMS Hurricane Damage Forecast
(All data is from the ICAT Damage Estimator, total damages shown.)
Read the entire post here: The 2006-2010 RMS Hurricane Damage Forecast
============================================================
Let me add a couple of points of interest to the already impressive set of facts.
The last Category 5 hurricane to strike the USA was hurricane Andrew in 1992. Many people think Katrina in 2005 made landfall as a CAT5 when it hit New Orleans. Not true.
From the National Hurricane Center (NHC) Hurricane History page:
This horrific tropical cyclone formed from the combination of a tropical wave, an upper-level trough, and the mid-level remnants of Tropical Depression Ten. A tropical depression formed on August 23 about 200 miles southeast of Nassau in the Bahamas. Moving northwestward, it became Tropical Storm Katrina during the following day about 75 miles east-southeast of Nassau. The storm moved through the northwestern Bahamas on August 24-25, and then turned westward toward southern Florida. Katrina became a hurricane just before making landfall near the Miami-Dade/Broward county line during the evening of August 25. The hurricane moved southwestward across southern Florida into the eastern Gulf of Mexico on August 26. Katrina then strengthened significantly, reaching Category 5 intensity on August 28. Later that day, maximum sustained winds reached 175 mph with an aircraft-measured central pressure of 902 mb while centered about 195 miles southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River. Katrina turned to the northwest and then north, with the center making landfall near Buras, Louisiana at 1110 UTC August 29 with maximum winds estimated at 125 mph (Category 3). Continuing northward, the hurricane made a second landfall near the Louisiana/Mississippi border at 1445 UTC with maximum winds estimated at 120 mph (Category 3). Weakening occurred as Katrina moved north-northeastward over land, but it was still a hurricane near Laurel, Mississippi. The cyclone weakened to a tropical depression over the Tennessee Valley on 30 August. Katrina became an extratropical low on August 31 and was absorbed by a frontal zone later that day over the eastern Great Lakes.
The last hurricane to make landfall on the USA was Hurricane IKE, on Sept 13th, 2008. As of today, we now have 773 days since then. It is likely that we may see this extend to June 1st of next year, the official start of hurricane season when it will be 991 days. And if there is no US landfalling hurricane in the 9 days after that, it will hit 1000 days. Chances are good that this will happen.
The longest period of time the US went without a landfalling category 3 hurricane was from August 1999 with hurricane Bret CAT3, to August 2004 with hurricane Charley CAT4, a period of 5 years.
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> Since 1900 there is no precedent of an Atlantic hurricane season
> with 10 or more hurricanes where none has struck the US as a hurricane.
At last some ‘unprecedented climatology’ we can agree with!
[off topic, try tips and notes ~ ctm]
The term “factoid” is unfortunate as is it is wrongly used (here, and almost everywhere else that it appears). It doesn’t mean “a small fact”. I believe the term was coined by Norman Mailer who used it to mean a falsehood which has achieved the status of truth by sheer repetition.
so will this year be the 110th lowest hurricane strike rate or maybe the warmists will twist it to be the ‘worst hurricane strike rate since records’ began! (in this case worst being the lowest! LOL)
@Vandersmeldt
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Tightened+muzzle+scientists+Orwellian/3515345/story.htm
It’s not Orwellian, it’s “Lysenkoism”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko
Reply: I deleted the off topic original comment, but am leaving your reply as you are an innocent. ~ ctm
Next time ask the prophet to be more accurate, otherwise, tell him, you won’t giving anymore alms to his Gaia Church.
Young Rog. will soon be following Rog. Sen. into the skeptic views column. His blog is well worth visiting for balanced commentary. J.C. too! (balanced and sceptical).
It is very sad that science has been reduced to epithets such as skeptic, heretic etc., but the pressure is surely rising and normal service will return as soon as possible.(BBC)
Hope all is well with you and your family, Anthony.
While Earl didn’t ‘strike’ the US, it caused hurricane conditions. i guess the word ‘strike’ means that the eye makes landfall/the center passes over land?
SO even if in the future you have a Cat 5 pass just south of the Keys, causing a damaging storm surge and winds of a cat 3 or higher in Miami, as long as the storm center does not go over the keys, and then the center hits Mexico, and not the US, it’s not recorded as a strike though the US coast felt the wrath of it at least once if not twice? to me that would sound like the US was struck by Hurricane ____ even though it never made landfall.
Someone should define all the terms for describing hurricanes interracting with land (stike, landfall, impact, etc…) and come up with a universal way of describing what actually happens.
What is the significance of hurricanes making landfall or not? Is there correspondence to climate change?
Why ruin a good story with facts !!!
Very interesting information.
While looking over Pielke’s site I noticed the upcoming meeting. Looks like it could be very interesting. Wish I lived in the vicinity.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/10/beyond-climategate-curry-pielke-and.html
I live in North Carolina which is the second most hurricane prone state after Florida. The last category 4 hurricane to hit North Carolina was Hurricane Hazel in 1954. Hazel had sustained hurricane force winds all the way to Toronto. South Carolina had a category 4 in 1989 with Hurricane Hugo, which made landfall at Charleston.
If hurricanes are getting stronger, why has it been 56 years since a category 4 storm struck the second most hurricane prone place in the US?
Anybody who has lived through a hurricane knows wind is not the worst part. Not even close. The worst part of a hurricane is the sustained heavy rain. Hurricane intensity is overrated by those who have never lived through them because it is easier to scare people wind wind speed than flooding several days away.
Does the remarkable dearth of US hurricane landfalls in recent years fall into the newly defined category of “climate disruption” ?
dis•rup•tion [dis-ruhp-shuhn]
–noun
1. An interruption to the regular flow or sequence of something.
Roy says: (October 26, 2010 at 2:32 pm) The term “factoid” is unfortunate as is it is wrongly used…
Worwhile comment, Roy. Owe you for noting it as one tends to let it slip by (with a slight mental grimace at such an ugly word). The following are two definitions from its use on the web which back up your point rather nicely; and confirm the value of your caution:
— something resembling a fact; unverified (often invented) information that is given credibility because it appeared in print
— a brief (usually one sentence and usually trivial) news item
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/hurricanes/2010-06-01-hurricanes-sun_N.htm
Hmmm. Guess this isn’t true then. Unless the reason for the increased landfalls is a result of a changing storm track. If that is true, then perhaps the extended minimum activity has changed the storm tracks away from the US, and we can expect an increase in landfalls with the next rise in solar activity.
There is something that has become increasingly apparent to me. Warmist scientists keep pointing to WILL, SCENARIOS, MAY, MIGHT and other weasel words. We sceptics have heared all their predictions from the PAST and point them to PRESENT and PAST observations. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Warmists are running out of time and painting themselves into a corner. Serve the popcorn!
Chant it with me now. . . . “it’s still in the pipeline!”
It must be “global climate disruption” that is dissipating all those defenceless hurricanes.
Herbie Vandersmeldt says:
October 26, 2010 at 2:29 pm
If those scientists had commercial contracts for research they would probably have signed confidentiality agreements and would not be rushing off into the limelight of the press with their results.
If the government gives you a contract for research why should that automatically confer the freedom to run off to the press with the results? Surely, the government, as the contractor, has the final say as to whether the results can be divulged to the press, and in what form.
[off topic try tips and notes ~ ctm]
Well, I tried to respond to one of his threads, but Google has decided that they want more personal information in order to use my G-mail account as a post ID.
Google can pack sand, they know enough already.
My question/statement/opinion was about a hypothetical property insurance company using this “Risk Modeling Agency of the Year” (as ranked by Reactions™ magazine) data to base their billing tables on.
Since they seem to have missed it by a factor of three (over estimated), who get’s the money?
Well, if I were in the insurance business, I would be taking keen interest in that little fact. It means that if past history is any indication, there would be a pretty good likelihood of a major hurricane hitting the US next year.
Billy Liar says:
“If the government gives you a contract for research why should that automatically confer the freedom to run off to the press with the results?”
Well, we’re not talking nuclear defense secrets here. This is the weather. If the taxpayers are being looted of $Billions every year to pay for “climate studies,” the least the public should get out of it are the [always inaccurate] results.
My concern is that this is precisely the bogus excuse Michael Mann uses to withhold his methodologies from MBH98-99. How can a hypothesis be falsified if the promoter hides his methods? How can other scientists replicate Mann’s work? How can it be tested?
We know the real reason is because if Mann disclosed his [taxpayer funded] methodologies, his Hokey Stick would be publicly falsified, the IPCC would be a laughingstock, and Mann would be exposed to the world as the charlatan he is.
What I get out of this statistic is this…
US landfalling hurricanes have been well documented for 150+ years, and I doubt any have been missed. People notice hurricanes. The number of landfalling hurricanes is not changing or disrupting, and may actually be declining slightly over the past century.
Meanwhile, fewer and fewer mid-ocean hurricanes are falling through the net, so the number of these is increasing. Perhaps it has increased too much – take the case of Hurricane Vince out near the Azores in 2005. The NHC advisory that upped this storm to hurricane status is posted at the end of this note, but here’s the first and last sentences…
IF IT LOOKS LIKE A HURRICANE… IT PROBABLY IS… DESPITE ITS
ENVIRONMENT AND UNUSUAL LOCATION. … BUT WE HAVE NO DATA TO CONFIRM OR DENY THE DVORAK ESTIMATES.
So, was Vince a hurricane? Or did the 2005 season have so many hurricanes because at least one, and perhaps more, looked and walked like ducks but had no in-situ observations to verify its status?
So, then, if landfalling hurricanes are staying the same in number, and total hurricanes are increasing due to satellites, guessing, and so on, the ratio of US/total will go down.
ZCZC MIATCDAT3 ALL
TTAA00 KNHC DDHHMM
HURRICANE VINCE DISCUSSION NUMBER 2
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
5 PM EDT SUN OCT 09 2005
IF IT LOOKS LIKE A HURRICANE… IT PROBABLY IS… DESPITE ITS
ENVIRONMENT AND UNUSUAL LOCATION. MOST AVAILABLE DATA SUGGESTS VINCE HAS BEEN STRENGTHENING TODAY. IN FACT… THE CIRA INTENSITY ESTIMATE BASED ON THE EARLIER AMSU OVERPASS NEAR 07Z WAS 50 KT AND 995 MB… SO VINCE WAS PROBABLY EVEN A LITTLE STRONGER THIS MORNING THAN INDICATED IN THE PREVIOUS ADVISORY. MORE RECENTLY… METSAT-8 IMAGERY REVEALS THAT THE EARLIER RAGGED EYE FEATURE WITH ABOUT 20 N MI DIAMETER HAS CONTRACTED TO 15 N MI AS A BONA FIDE EYE. SOME ANTICYCLONIC OUTFLOW ALOFT IS NOW DISCERNIBLE AROUND THE DEEP CONVECTION… ALTHOUGH THE CONVECTIVE TOPS REMAIN A BIT WARMER THAN IN MOST HURRICANES. SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE DVORAK T NUMBERS RANGE FROM 3.5 TO 4.5… WITH THE HIGHER END OF THIS RANGE BASED ON AN EYE PATTERN. THESE ESTIMATES PROVIDE THE BASIS FOR THE ADVISORY INTENSITY OF 65 KT. IT IS NOT CLEAR IF THE SURFACE WINDS ARE AS STRONG AS THE SATELLITE SIGNATURE WOULD NORMALLY SUGGEST… ESPECIALLY SINCE THE CONVECTION MIGHT LACK SOME VIGOR OVER THE 23-24C SSTS… BUT WE HAVE NO DATA TO CONFIRM OR DENY THE DVORAK ESTIMATES.