Ten-Year Gap in Major Hurricanes Continues

Could the first tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season break the 10-year “hurricane drought” record?
It has been a decade since the last major hurricane, Category 3 or higher, made landfall in the United States. This is the longest period of time for the United States to avoid a major hurricane since reliable records began in 1850. According to a NASA study, a 10-year gap comes along only every 270 years.
It should be noted that hurricanes making landfall as less than Category 3 can still cause extreme damage, with heavy rains and coastal storm surges. Such was the case with Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
The National Hurricane Center calls any Category 3 or more intense hurricane a “major” storm. Timothy Hall, a research scientist who studies hurricanes at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York and colleague Kelly Hereid, who works for ACE Tempest Re, a reinsurance firm based in Connecticut, ran a statistical hurricane model based on a record of Atlantic tropical cyclones from 1950 to 2012 and sea surface temperature data.
The researchers ran 1,000 computer simulations of the period from 1950-2012 – in effect simulating 63,000 separate Atlantic hurricane seasons. They also found that there is approximately a 40 percent chance that a major hurricane will make landfall in the United States every year.
Research: The frequency and duration of U.S. hurricane droughts
Journal: Geophysical Research Letters, May 5, 2015
Link to paper:
For more information:
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Joy Ng
Music credit: Climb the Ladder by Kurt Oldman from the KillerTracks Catalog
This video is public domain and along with other supporting visualizations can be downloaded from NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio at:
Like our videos? Subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel:
Or subscribe to NASA’s Goddard Shorts HD Podcast:
Follow NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center on:
Facebook:
Twitter:
Flickr:
Instagram:
Google+: