Deadly late-season Atlantic hurricanes growing more frequent
What may be the final tropical disturbance in the Atlantic (94L) has fizzled, due to dry air and increasing wind shear, and there's an excellent chance that this will be final "Invest" of 2010 in the Caribbean. The 2-week wind shear forecast from the GFS model is showing a dramatic increase in wind shear over the Caribbean in the coming weeks, which should put an end to the Caribbean hurricane season. However, it's been another remarkably active November in the tropics this year. The formation of Hurricane Tomas this month marks the fourth consecutive year in the Atlantic with a hurricane occurring November 1 or later. We had Category 1 Hurricane Noel in 2007, Category 4 Hurricane Paloma in 2008, Category 2 Hurricane Ida in 2009, and now Category 2 Tomas in 2010. This is the first time since beginning of reliable hurricane records in 1851 that there have been four consecutive years with a late-season November or December hurricane in the Atlantic. The previous record was three straight years, set in 1984 - 1986. It used to be that late-season hurricanes were a relative rarity--in the 140-year period from 1851 - 1990, only 30 hurricanes existed in the Atlantic on or after November 1, an average of one late-season hurricane every five years. Only four major Category 3 or stronger late-season hurricanes occurred in those 140 years, and only three Caribbean hurricanes. But in the past twenty years, late-season hurricanes have become 3.5 times more frequent--there have been fifteen late-season hurricanes, and five of those occurred in the Caribbean. Three of these were major hurricanes, and were the three strongest late-season hurricanes on record--Lenny of 1999 (155 mph winds), Paloma of 2008 (145 mph winds), and Michelle of 2001 (140 mph winds). Of course, the number of storms we are talking about is small, and one cannot say anything scientifically significant about late-season Atlantic tropical cyclone numbers, unless we include storms from late October as well. This was done, though, by Dr. Jim Kossin of the University of Wisconsin, who published a 2008 paper in Geophysical Research Letters titled, "Is the North Atlantic hurricane season getting longer?" He concluded that yes, there is an "apparent tendency toward more common early- and late-season storms that correlates with warming Sea Surface Temperature but the uncertainty in these relationships is high". The recent increase in powerful and deadly November hurricanes would seem to support this conclusion.
Figure 1. Damage on St. Lucia from Hurricane Tomas. Image credit: St. Lucia Star.
Deadly late-season Atlantic tropical cyclones are growing more frequent
In the 500+ years people have been encountering hurricanes in the Atlantic and recording these encounters, we are sure of only twenty November and December storms that have caused loss of life. If we restrict our time window to the past 70 years, when we have a fairly reliable data base of hurricane mortality thanks to the yearly storm summaries published in Monthly Weather Review, we find only ten late-season storms that killed people. Of those ten, seven occurred in the past twenty years, including the second deadliest late-season tropical cyclone on record, Hurricane Gordon of 1994, which killed 1145 people on Haiti. Only the Great Cuba Hurricane of 1932, which killed 3107 people in Cuba, the Cayman Islands, and the Bahamas, was a deadlier late-season tropical cyclone. Hurricane Tomas ranks as the 6th deadliest late-season hurricane since 1851 in the Atlantic. The storm left 30 dead or missing on Haiti, at least nine dead on St.Lucia, two on Curacao, and one in the Virgin Islands. The storm has caused hundreds more indirect cholera deaths in Haiti, by spreading contaminated water.
Figure 2. Number of days a named storm existed in the Atlantic during November and December between 1950 and 2010. Years when an El Niño event occurred are not included, in order to make the plot smoother (El Niño events tend to dampen Atlantic hurricane activity during all portions of the season.) There has been a general increase in late-season tropical cyclone activity over the Atlantic in recent decades.
The increase in deadly late-season storms in the past twenty years is primarily a Caribbean phenomena. Only two deadly late season hurricanes have affected the U.S. in the past century: Hurricane Kate of 1985, which killed five in Florida, and the 1925 Florida Hurricane, which hit southwest Florida as a Category 1 hurricane on December 1. This remarkable storm was the latest landfalling hurricane in U.S. history, and killed 60 people.
Resources
Kossin, J., 2008, "Is the North Atlantic hurricane season getting longer?", Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 35, L23705, doi:10.1029/2008GL036012, 2008.
A list of the 20 deadly late-season tropical cyclones: http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/deadly_nove mber.asp
My blog post, Is the Atlantic hurricane season getting longer?
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Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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impressive blow up of convection
Sorry, gotta love Texas weather. It will be cold Thursday and Friday and it may be in the 70's on Monday!!!
AL, 94, 2010111900, , BEST, 0, 169N, 858W, 25, 1011, LO, 34, NEQ, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1014, 150, 60, 0, 0, L, 0, , 0, 0, INVEST, S,
and Sky King/Lone Ranger...
We have had the coolest summer in S CA, then it hits 100F in San Diego..
We had tornadoes in Flagstaff, AZ, golf ball sized hail in Phoenix..
And there were two EF-1 tornadoes on 11/17/10 during the middle of the night near Albany, NY and in Baltimore, MD..
MN & TX were tied in the tornado department..
We had the strongest Great Lakes storm on record with 61 tornado reports..
And yes, you may get 2 more tropical cyclones before the end of the year..
or even Go ahead, make my day punk
drop by for a visit over the winter all info is self updating except model animations those i have to work on
Link
LOL, now those were the days!
MARK
17.76N/85.90W
I got it, oh "experienced one". LOL.
Good evening, ya rascal.
Refresh, wait a couple of seconds, then press ESC or click the red X on the menu bar. That will stop the pics from loading but you'll still get the text.
Ya better hope it is an error! Mother nature, does not care who is watching, or what they think ........
Poll: Most Republicans don't believe in climate change
A new Pew poll shows a dramatic change in opinion on climate change among Republicans that seems to mirror a new tone on the issue taken up by GOP politicians.
In the poll, 53 percent of Republicans said there is no evidence for climate change, when only three years ago 62 percent of GOPers said they did believe in global warming. Almost 80 percent of Democrats and a majority of independents said there is solid evidence for global warming.
Overall, 59 percent of adults thought there was good evidence that the planet is warming, and 34 percent said global warming is mostly caused by human activity. Both numbers are down steeply from 2006.
No one, Press. What it be?
For most part of the day:
Global Warming
Evening, Sunline.
Click for larger image:
LMAO. Nice. Humor is a necessary ingredient in the human condition, imo.
Imagine the amount of CH4 available!!!
LOL, methane can be, well , see for yourself ;)
His personal life aside, he's a far better forecaster and teacher than you. His private paying clients probably think so too.
641 the methane will reach critical mass dec.21,2012!!!!!
648 on dec.20,2012 the arctic will pop it's cork & release all the methane..
OK, which is it? I need to make some plans...;-)
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