A brief note from Kip Hansen — August 21, 2024
It's hurricane season in the Northern Hemisphere. In the United States, this is pretty much a concern along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of the United States. Hurricanes have made landfall on the Pacific Coast, but they have been rare.
Every news outlet has repeatedly told us that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Hurricane Center is predicting an “extremely active hurricane season” in the Atlantic basin.
For more than a decade, my wife and I spent hurricane season on a catamaran in the northern Caribbean when we felt confident, and on the U.S. South Atlantic coast when we felt less confident. We've only had one hurricane hit in 12 years, and as you might have guessed, it wasn't in the Caribbean, but north of Beaufort, North Carolina, with Hurricane Florence.
Tropical storms and hurricanes move into the Atlantic without making landfall, causing little concern except for shipping. Like many things, the real trouble occurs at the interfaces of different dynamical systems, such as where land meets ocean.
The sailors among you will realize that a sailboat cannot escape a hurricane. Even when driving a car, the speed of a sailboat is usually limited. Therefore, during hurricane season, we plan ahead so that we can easily reach the safety of the hurricane hole.
The biggest question for sailors and sailors of all types is “Where can we be safe if a big storm comes?”
Here’s one way to look at it: From NOAA “Hurricane strikes in the continental United States from 1950 to 2023“
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This map produced by NOAA shows all hurricanes that have made landfall on the eastern United States and Gulf Coast since 1950. Note that I've changed the Cat 2 color to pink to be easier to distinguish from the Cat 5 – both were originally red, and I've added a thick dark red line along the coast where the hurricane is no hit 74 years since 1950.
In the image above, there are a few odd, perhaps “lucky” short stretches along the south-facing Gulf Coast and Florida's west coast.
Then there’s the east coast of Florida and Georgia:
The “unaffected area” in between includes Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center. To the north is much of the Georgia coast.
Then follow the coast to the Delmarva Peninsula and all the way to Maine.
In the close-up, you can see that I missed some of the “non-coasts” of the south coast of Massachusetts, save for Category 2 Hurricane Edna, which hit the south coast of Cape Cod in 1954.
Some of this is due to geophysical factors of the geology (the shape of the coastline itself) and prevailing wind/weather/ocean current patterns. Some of these are definitely just “misses” However“.
Note that the Jersey Shore is a long stretch of barrier islands extending from Sandy Hook, New Jersey south to Atlantic City, a nearly continuous barrier island/sandbar that is almost entirely covered by homes and businesses, including Atlantic City, The city recently suffered a direct hit from the 1903 hurricane, “the first and only known North Atlantic hurricane to make landfall in New Jersey since records began in 1851.” Note that former Hurricane Sandy did hit the Jersey Shore in 2012 as tropical storm or “Superstorm Sandy.”
Does this history mean that areas that have “never been hit” will be protected from hurricanes later this year? Or next year? Or in the next few decades? No, I don't think so, but I'm open to hearing from those who know more about the drivers of hurricanes.
Geography appears to protect the east-facing coasts of Massachusetts and Maine, however, these coasts do bear the brunt of nor'easters, which occur in the opposite season (September to April) from hurricanes .
One last thing: tracks of all known tropical storms and hurricanes:
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Isn't this an interesting picture? Where tropical cyclones originate, where they go, and where they don't go.
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Author comments:
I am not offering any speculation, any theory, any hypothesis, or even any opinion. The only time I care about hurricane tracks is when I'm captain – which means I'm only looking about five days in advance, which is the limit of how accurate hurricane track forecasts can be – and even then, their average forecast point landing accuracy is only about is +/- 150 miles. If it is done in advance, it is basically useless.
Edward Lorenz and Dave Fultz's dishwashing experiments made it abundantly clear that the origins and nature of these cyclonic storms are chaotic.
Thank you for reading.
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