Onshore hurricanes in a slump
Record-breaking nine years have elapsed since last Category 3 or stronger hurricane made landfall in the United States.
BY
12:36PM, APRIL 17, 2015No major hurricanes have slammed into the coast of the United States since Hurricane Wilma in 2005. The gap in these hurricanes making landfall is the longest in recorded history and is incredibly rare, researchers report.
Many hurricanes in recent years have reached Category 3 or above while out to sea, but they’ve all fizzled into weaker storms before coming ashore. The landfall drought is probably a temporary run of good luck rather than a climate shift. The researchers estimate that there’s a 61 percent chance the drought will continue through this year.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/onshore-hurricanes-slump
I have promised to publish a post about weather and weather forecasting. That post will be titled, Weather or Not, but this is not that.
This is more a little teaser, an appetizer. The above quote was taken from the most recent on-line edition of Science News, an absolutely wonderful magazine that now comes out every other week, as the on-line portion has gotten bigger.
Having read SN for more than 20 years, I’ve always looked forward to what juicy bits it would contain each week.
I’ve quoted the above portion because it highlights something that I will talk about extensively in my post, the power of persistence. So as the article above talks about how rare it is for the U.S. not to have a Cat 3, or greater, hurricane landfall; we have already gone 9 seasons without one.
These researchers still prognosticate that there is still an above even chance, 61%, that we will not have a landfall this upcoming season also.
I’m sure that’s predicated on the power of persistence. So even though this is far out of the ordinary, (no landfall), persistence is still hard to beat when it comes to forecasting.
In my upcoming post, Weather or Not, I will discuss the impact of persistence on a forecast, how to evaluate the quality of a weather forecast, how a forecaster can be right 95% of the time; but still not make good forecasts! and most of all, how you, the cruiser, should or should not use said forecast.
Stay tuned.
Author: Richard on Dauntless
I’m an eclectic person, who grew up in New York, lived overseas for many years and have a boat, Dauntless, a 42 foot Kadey Krogen trawler yacht. Dauntless enables me to not only live in many different parts of the world, but to do it in a way that is interesting, affordable, with the added spice of a challenge. Dauntless also allows me to be in touch with nature. As the boat glides through the ocean, you have a sense of being part of a living organism. When dolphins come to frolic, they stay longer if you are out there talking to them, watching them. Birds come by, sometimes looking for a handout; sometimes grateful to find a respite from their long journey. I grew up on the New York waterfront, in the West Village, when everything west of Hudson St. was related to shipping and cargo from around the world. For a kid, it was an exciting place of warehouses, trucks, and working boats of all kinds: tugs and the barges and ships, cargo and passenger, they were pushing around. My father was an electrical engineer, my mother an intellectual, I fell in between. I have always been attracted to Earth’s natural processes, the physical sciences. I was in 8th grade when I decided to be a Meteorologist. After my career in meteorology, my natural interest in earth sciences: geology, astronomy, geography, earth history, made it a natural for me to become a science teacher in New York City, when I moved back to the Big Apple. Teaching led to becoming a high school principal to have the power to truly help kids learn and to be successful not only in school but in life. Dauntless is in western Europe now. In May and June, I will be wrapping up the last two years in northern Europe, heading south to spend the rest of the year in Spain & Portugal. Long term, I’m planning on returning to North American in the fall of 2017 and from there continuing to head west until we’re in Northeast Asia, Japan and South Korea, where we will settle for a bit. But now, my future lies not in NY or even Europe, but back to the water, where at night, when the winds die down, there is no noise, only the silence of the universe. I feel like I am at home, finally. View all posts by Richard on Dauntless
Dauntless at Sea 