JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – To hijack Sophia's famous line from the Golden Girls (a favorite show of my grandmother): "Picture it." Katrina, Opal, Elena, Eloise, Connie, Diane, Labor Day Hurricane -- all major hurricanes that all impacted the U.S. in a year ending in 5.
As we enter the 2015 hurricane season, be reminded that it's been 10 years since our country's last devastating blow by a major hurricane. Are you ready?
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I know what you're thinking: another sentsationalized story about the impending doom unlike anything we've seen to drive ratings. Right? Wrong. We're not in a ratings period.
In my spare time, I like to read over weather forums (KHOU Weather Forums, Storm2K.org, AmericanWeather, ect.) to stay up-to-date on the latest thinking behind evolving weather patterns from seasoned meteorologists.
Excuse me while I push up my glasses and fix my pocket protector. There. Got it.
This past weekend I tripped over something interesting: every year, except 1925, going back to 1915, there have been bad hurricane strikes on the United States. This grabbed my attention because, well, we've never gone this long between major hits. The last one was category 3 Wilma that hit southwest Florida in October, 2005.
We're due. Long over due. It's almost scary.
Let's take a look back at the last 11 decades with the years ending in 5:
-1905: no major hits
-1915: Category 4, Galveston
-1925: no major hits
-1935: Category 5, Florida Keys (Labor Day Hurricane)
-1945: Cat. 4, Homestead/Cat. 3, Corpus Christi
-1955: Connie, Diane, East Coast.
-1965: Betsy, Key Largo, New Orleans
-1975: Eloise, Florida Panhandle
-1985: Elena, Biloxi
-1995: Opal, Florida Panhandle (seen at right)
-2005: Katrina, Rita, Wilma/Louisiana, Texas/Louisiana, Florida respectively
-2015: ???
Back on April 9th, the brains over at Colorado State University released their prediction for the upcoming 2015 Atlantic hurricane season. Due to impending El Nino conditions, they released one of the lowest predictions in their history calling for 7 named storms, 3 hurricanes and 1 major hurricane.
That means for the first time since 1925, the U.S. won't be hit by a major storm, right? Wrong again.
You don't have to look back very far to find that even slow years had devastating hits. One year that comes to mind that saw only 7 named storms was 1992. As you know, that was the year of Andrew -- a storm so devastating that it's name and associated tales will grow old as time itself.
In 1965, only 7 storms developed -- one of which was Betsy, the previous benchmark for hurricanes in New Orleans, that gave that city it's worst hurricane conditions prior to Katrina.
It gets better. The year 1983 gave birth to only four, count them: 1, 2, 3, 4, storms but one of those was Hurricane Alicia which devastated Galveston and Houston.
The low season forecast is based on analogs from previous years with similar atmospheric conditions to our current set up.
According to Dr. Phil Klotzbach, tropical meteorologist and lead hurricane forecaster:
"We select prior hurricane seasons since 1950 which have similar atmospheric-oceanic conditions to those currently being experienced and those that we expect to see this summer and fall. We searched for years that were generally characterized by at least moderate El Niño conditions and cool conditions in the tropical Atlantic during the upcoming hurricane season.
There were five hurricane seasons since 1950 (1957, 1987, 1991, 1993, 2014) with characteristics most similar to what we expect to see in August-October of 2015. We anticipate that the 2015 hurricane season will have slightly less activity than the average of our five analog years. We believe that this season should experience well below-average activity."
It should be noted and well understood that the number of storms forecast in a given year has no indication on the number of landfalls or the strength of storms at landfall. Above I've given three examples just off the top of my head where a low season total equated to billions of dollars in damage.
There has been recent discussion as to whether the MDR (main development region) has transitioned into a cold phase in the Atlantic as SST's (sea surface temperatures) have been running cooler than normal for the past few seasons. This along with Saharan dust and strong wind shear promise a paltry Atlantic basin. Que the crickets sound.
A quiet Atlantic doesn't necessarily mean a quiet gulf, which often times is unaffected by global, multi-decadal oscillations such as the MJO (madden-julian oscillation) or El Nino. Sometimes these home grown storms, such as Opal and Alicia can pack quite a wallop; both of which developed in the gulf and made landfall with devastating effects.
So as we enter the 2015 season, regardless of how active or inactive it turns out to be, let's hope your "picture it" moment isn't one of ruin and despair from a season that wasn't supposed to be.
*Courtesy: Katrina and Opal images provided by NOAA