Posted on 05/18/2016 6:47:05 PM PDT by nickcarraway
It's been over a decade since Florida experienced a hurricane landfall, an improbable record that won't likely last much longer, and may be snapped this season.
Since Category 3 Hurricane Wilma roared ashore in South Florida on Oct. 24, 2005, the Sunshine State has gone over 10 years without a single hurricane landfall.
That amounts to 66 straight Atlantic hurricanes - starting with Hurricane Beta in late October 2005 through Hurricane Alex in January 2016 - that haven't come ashore in Florida.
Colorado State University tropical meteorologist Dr. Phil Klotzbach said this non-Florida hurricane landfall streak exactly doubled the previous record from the late 1970s to mid-1980s.
This is remarkable given the state has 1,260 miles of coastline, the longest of any state along the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean.
According to the National Hurricane Center, 40 percent of the landfalling U.S. hurricanes from 1851 to 2010 have impacted the Florida coast. That's a total of 114 hurricanes in about 160 years.
Breaking down the number of Florida's hurricane strikes by decade, the 2010s are even more of an oddity.
Both the 1970s and 1980s featured relatively few strikes.
However, that was also during the nadir of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, a cycle of North Atlantic sea-surface temperatures, during which numbers of named storms and particularly stronger hurricanes can lessen during the cooler phase that was in place then.
The AMO's warmer phase beginning in 1995 has been found to correlate to a higher number of tropical storms becoming strong hurricanes.
But the number of named storms and hurricanes are poorly correlated to landfalls, and the percentage of hurricanes impacting the U.S. since 2006 is a record low for any 10-year period, according to Klotzbach.
Despite that, there have been some recent hurricane close calls for the Sunshine State.
U.S. hurricane landfalls from 2006-2015. (Note: Sandy's track is not shown, as it was not officially a hurricane at landfall.) In each of these cases, however, the upper-atmospheric steering currents have pushed those hurricanes either well east or west of Florida.
In other cases, particularly in recent seasons, some combination of dry air, wind shear (the change in wind speed and/or direction with height) or land interaction in the Caribbean has weakened or completely dissipated any tropical cyclones threatening Florida.
Chantal (2013)
Danny (2015)
Erika (2015)
Florida has been extraordinarily lucky to have at least one of these factors either weakening or steering away hurricanes consistently since late 2005.
Eight tropical storms have made landfall in Florida from 2006-2015. There have also been eight tropical storm landfalls in the Sunshine State from 2006-2015. In 2012, Tropical Storm Beryl and Tropical Storm Debby triggered significant flooding in northern Florida. Debby also spawned 18 tornadoes. Several years earlier in 2008, Tropical Storm Fay moved very slowly across Florida and also caused significant flooding in parts of the state.
And it was just 12 years ago that Florida was struck by four hurricanes in a span of 45 days during the 2004 hurricane season.
Tracks of Florida's "big four" hurricanes of 2004. Ivan did not technically landfall in Florida, but produced hurricane-force winds at Pensacola Naval Air Station.
Such long gaps in hurricane activity like the one we are seeing can lead to complacency among residents.
Klotzbach noted that Florida has gained over 2 million new residents since Hurricane Wilma in 2005.
As of 2012, only 36 percent of Florida residents were native born, and Florida was adding about 1,000 new residents a day as of December 2015.
It's safe to assume a large percentage of those new residents, and perhaps some younger residents in parts of the state, have never been through a hurricane before.
(MORE: 2016 Hurricane Season Outlook)
Despite this long run of fortune, Florida will be hit by a hurricane again, possibly this season.
If you live where hurricanes and tropical storms threaten, you should be prepared every hurricane season, regardless of how long it's been since the last one, and what the pre-season hurricane season outlooks say.
After all, it only takes one storm to turn any hurricane season into a disaster.
Perhaps...it may end this season...or Perhaps not.
What a bunch of hogwash.
I suspect that as long as there is a dearth of Sunspots, we will see a dearth of Hurricanes too.
Stayed put during Hurricane Andrew. Wont be making that mistake again.
Every day, it’s 24 hours closer!
About a decade ago they assured us that Florida would be pummeled by armies of enormous hurricanes as Global Warming really took hold.
But they were wrong. Imagine that.
Hey, Rocky—Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat.
This time for sure!
Look at the poster from An Inconvenient Truth.
It shows a smokestack with a hurricane coming out.
Because global warming.
You know, global warming.
I SAID global warming.
How many times must I tell people what a master weather predictor like Al Gore tell you stupid sheep before you finally listen to his wisdom?
There have been nothing but hurricanes and no snow for TEN years.
Apparently we have not listened to wisdom.
Give Al Gore more money, and he'll tell you that NO hurricanes proves global warming.
"Next time...DEFINITELY!"
But, but, but Al said we’d have stronger and more frequent hurricanes. These weather hacks can’t reliably tell me if it’s going to rain three days from now and they expect me to believe their long term projections. HA...I laugh at their “science”.
In January, there’s even a couple days it gets so cold I have to wear socks.
Based on my experience with hurricanes, I’d stick out a 1 or 2, but anything above that I am gone.
The storms are bad enough, but it’s the 2-3 weeks after with no electricity under high pressure weather conditions and limited civilization that can really hurt.
And if you luck out and win the reverse lottery and get a real deal storm, that is the scariest thing ever.
They say this every year.
And three weeks without electricity.
Do you fart in their general direction?
Yes. That’s when those temperatures plunge into the low 60’s and 50’s!
That graphic reminds me of my wife’s yarn bag.
So, will the trop storms hate FL this year, or give it another respite?
I say, let ‘em crash!
There’s something to be said for consistency.
GREAT! We just moved back here last June.
> I say, let ‘em crash!
That was a hilarious movie.
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