Major Hurricanes Hitting The US Half As Often As They Used To

The graph below plots the number of years between major hurricane strikes in the US. They occur half as often now as they did in the 1940s.

ScreenHunter_178 Apr. 27 07.00

Chronological List of All Hurricanes

About Tony Heller

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12 Responses to Major Hurricanes Hitting The US Half As Often As They Used To

  1. gator69 says:

    It’s hard for hurricanes to hit countries that are both underwater and evaporated.

  2. Laurence Clark Crossen says:

    Because we are in a cold period analogous to the one during the middle of the twentieth century, this evidence seems to show that warmer climate results in more hurricanes, contrary to what I thought. The 1940’s were part of the warm period early in the twentieth century, weren’t they?

    • Joseph Bastardi says:

      We are not in a cold period. We are in a period similar to the 1950s now when the pacific cooled and the atlantic was warm. There is a heightened threat on the east coastal especially but its natural and easy to see. Whats laughable is the hullabaloo about Sandy when as far as overall intensity, it could not hold a candle to Hazel in 1954 which hit as a cat 4 on the NC coast in mid October. If you read our hurricane forecast you will see in no uncertain terms why this is a perilous period, but one that is well predicted and has been worse. In addition I give examples of how they SHOULD be events that rival the great hurricanes of the 30s,40s,50s. Alot of this is a matter of track and angle of attack of the storm. But Hazel, missing NC just east then hitting the Delmarva would have been far worse than Sandy for instance. So the period of higher threat is similar to those times, we have just not experienced this anywhere near what nature can do

      http://www.weatherbell.com/2013-Hurricane-Season-Forecast

      right off the bat, if you blended the tracks of Irene and Sandy and hit in mid hurricane season, you have a much bigger storm

      I am amused and amazed at some hurricane forecasters I knew and worked with in years past that were well aware of what could ( should?) happen given the natural cycle ( a great book to read, great storms of the Jersey shore.. shows what did happen only we didnt have the population buildup we do) now on the AGW bandwagon. Its like all that happened before does not count.

      • Laurence Clark Crossen says:

        I do not think hurricanes increase in intensity with warmer climate. I do tend to interpret temperature trends as involving something like a sixty year cycle superimposed on a longer term warming trend out of the Little Ice Age. It is generally accepted that the twentieth century had warm periods at the beginning and end with a cool period in the middle. This resembles a sixty year cycle. I know Sandy’s wrath was due to the tidal extreme.

      • Laurence Clark Crossen says:

        It has been repeatedly asserted that solar activity may be at lows going back even one hundred years. To judge from this it seems we may be in a thirty year cold period warmer than the one in the middle of the twentieth century.

      • Laurence Clark Crossen says:

        Considering that the Atlantic was warm and Pacific cold, it seems likely the earth as a whole was colder than average.

      • F. Guimaraes says:

        Thanks for your input Joe. I don’t know too much about storms but I agree 100% when you say that we’re still not in a cold period. The (real) cold period will be when both Pacific and Atlantic are in the negative phases of their oscillations. (I can only image how the winters will be then, having in sight the many records broken this year)
        In this article of Joe D’Aleo (Oct/2010)
        http://icecap.us/images/uploads/ARCTIC.pdf
        there is a graph on pg. 3 showing the evolution of the PDO in the last century and the AMO since 1950 on pg. 4, where we can see that the intensity of the positive PDO at the beginning of the XX century looks clearly smaller than those of later years and the intensity of the positive AMO during the 1950’s also looks smaller than the one that we’re in right now. It seems reasonable to conclude that solar radiations importantly affect the intensity (and probably also the duration) of the major thermal oscillations of the Pacific and the Atlantic.
        When do you expect the AMO to flip negative? Do you think it could be shortened by the present solar grand minimum or are you expecting this to happen only in future oscillations? Thanks.

      • Laurence Clark Crossen says:

        We are in a cold period similar to the one in the middle of the twentieth century when the Pacific cooled and the Atlantic was warm.

      • Laurence Clark Crossen says:

        Most climatologists and skeptics of AGW accept that there was a cold period in the middle of the twentieth century. Do you not accept this? I suggest we are again in a similar one now, albeit not as cold due to an underlying warming trend out of the LIA.

  3. tcvaughn says:

    By gosh! That graph looks like a hockey stick!

  4. F. Guimaraes says:

    @Laurence Clark Crossen I agree that we’re heading now to a cold period similar to the 1960’s, but if you connect the dots with the solar radiations as the essential cause of both warming and cooling trends of the climate you’ll see that that cooling period was associated with a simultaneous negative PDO and AMO, but also with intense lowering of radiations from cycle C19 to C20. The strong warm up that happened after that, until the end of the last century (~1998), was due also to increasing solar radiations
    http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2007/07/SOLARWIND_files/image004.png
    Therefore, despite the additional warmth of the last ~ 25 years of the XX century, the present conditions (oceans + radiations) are considerably more favorable to a cooling trend than in the 1960’s, because the radiations of cycle C24 are so low as they’ve not been since the Dalton minimum, or possibly the Maunder minimum.
    If this solar grand minimum confirms, we should very soon surpass the cooling of the 1960’s and even of the beginning of the XX century and, probably in just a few years (2030’s?), be at the levels of the last LIA.
    If the present minimum is of “Maunder type” we could in fact be heading to another full blown Ice Age, possibly in our lifetimes
    http://westernusawx.info/forums/index.php?showtopic=33725&&page=1

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