HurrMark wrote:wxman57 wrote:sammy126 wrote:Why are the storms getting more violent and destructive? Is it due to climate change?
Nope. In fact, the U.S. has seen far fewer major hurricane hits in the past 20 years than back in the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s.
Agreed... unless something unprecedented happens in November, we would have gone seven consecutive years without a major landfall. And if you go further back, we have gone 11 out of the last 13 years without one (and the one in 1999 hit the most sparsely populated county on the coast). So we really have been lucky...most of the big storms have either shunted out to sea or stayed south.
Mayor Bloomberg feels Sandy was due to global warming, but while it was a devastating storm, it was devastating only because it was in the "right" place at the "right" time...no other reason. The only thing that might be remotely related to global warming was higher than average SSTs, but most really were not on Sandy's track...they were further north.
Quite a few historic Cat 3's may have actually been Cat 1-2 if modern technology was available, since most were based on pressure-wind relationships. (A few may have been promoted as well, mostly small and rapid deepening storms).
If you look at a lot of historic storms, they would do Katrina-like damage or worse if they happened today. For example, the 1926 Miami hurricane would probably do close to $200 billion in damage if it happened today. The 1938 Long Island Express would do about $75 billion and the 1821 Norfolk and Long Island hurricane would probably do some insane number as well.