Another Quiet Hurricane Season
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/12/06/another-quiet-hurricane-season
By Paul Homewood http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2014/20141124_hurricaneseasonwrapup_2014.html With the hurricane season now officially at an end, it’s time to look back on yet another quiet year in the Atlantic. http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2014/20141124_hurricaneseasonwrapup_2014.html There have been eight storms, ranked as tropical storms or stronger, which compares to the 30-year average of twelve. Only one storm, Hurricane Arthur, made landfall in the US in July. The storm, which formed as a tropical depression on June 30, 2014, made landfall over the Shackleford Banks, between Cape Lookout and Beaufort, North Carolina, as a Category 2 hurricane. Sustained winds at the time of landfall were 77 mph with winds gusting to 101 mph. Arthur also went into the record books as the earliest hurricane to strike North Carolina in a season since records began in 1851, the National Hurricane Center said. The previous record was July 11, 1901. The hurricane did minimal damage to the Tar Heel State but caused major damage farther up the Eastern Seaboard. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were hard-hit by Arthur, which was post-tropical when it impacted the Canadian provinces on July 5. It was the strongest storm to affect the region since Hurricane Juan in 2003. It is now nine years since the last major hurricane (Cat3+), Wilma, hit the US in 2005. This is the longest spell on record without a major hurricane. Saffir-Simpson Category 1 2 3 4 5 ALL 3+ 1851-60 8 5 5 1 0 19 6 1861-70 8 6 1 0 0 15 1 1871-80 7 6 7 0 0 20 7 1881-90 8 9 4 1 0 22 5 1891-00 8 5 5 3 0 21 8 1901-10 10 4 4 0 0 18 4 1911-20 10 4 4 3 0 21 7 1921-30 5 3 3 2 0 13 5 1931-40 4 7 6 1 1 19 8 1941-50 8 6 9 1 0 24 10 1951-60 8 1 5 3 0 17 8 1961-70 3 5 4 1 1 14 6 1971-80 6 2 4 0 0 12 4 1981-90 9 1 4 1 0 15 5 1991-00 3 6 4 0 1 14 5 2001-10 8 4 6 0 0 18 6 2005-14 7 3 4 0 0 14 4 Av/Decade 7.2 4.6 4.6 1.1 0.2 17.7 5.9 Number of US Landfalling Hurricanes http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.html Over the last ten years, there have been 14 landfalling hurricanes, compared to the long term decadal average* of 17.7. Category 1 storms have been close to the average, but stronger hurricanes have been noticeably less common. Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation Finally, it is worth reminding ourselves what NOAA has to say about the AMO and hurricanes. During warm phases of the AMO, the numbers of tropical storms that mature into severe hurricanes is much greater than during cool phases, at least twice as many. Since the AMO switched to its warm phase around 1995, severe hurricanes have become much more frequent and this has led to a crisis in the insurance industry. http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/faq/amo_faq.php#faq_7 As we are still in the warm phase of the AMO, and will be for the next ten years possibly, we should be seeing more hurricanes, and certainly major ones, currently. In fact the opposite is true, which totally undermines alarmists’ warnings to the contrary. * It seems likely that the long term average is understated in the 19thC, not least during the Civil War years, when no hurricanes at all were reported in 1862/3/4.
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