The whole term "overdue" is typically very badly misused in all disaster contexts.
It has NO application whatsoever to hurricanes; the failure of a given area to be hit by a storm doesn't increase the likelyhood of that area to be hit in the next year.
It has SOME seismic or volcanic application, but again it's often overused. It's invalid to proclaim the Cascadia megathrust "overdue." More accurate to say "possibly due." There have been MANY gaps between quakes on it FAR longer than 300 years. Some of the gaps are about 300 years long, however.
And Rainier doesn't even have to erupt at all to cause a catastrophe. It could simply spontaneously collapse causing a lahar wiping out thousands of homes without any eruption at all.
I concur with your sensibility on this.
What, strategerist, do you think about the Polar Axis shift? (I've been wondering a great deal about this for quite some time.) According to what I've read, say, NC, is about more southward than it used to be. Think the "shift" has anything to do with Bustardi's prediction?
(You might view this all as a semantic argument, but I have to disagree...)
[...] the failure of a given area to be hit by a storm doesn't increase the likelyhood of that area to be hit in the next year.
That would be the case if the events were independent, but in the case of weather events and the entire system--incuding the oceans--that's not a valid assumption. These things are interrelated...for example, certain weather tends to follow El Niño events. Another example is if the atmosphere is supersaturated and precipitation is "overdue"...the chance of precipitation in this case relies solely upon a trigger, not on the buildup of moisture, and will be more likely to occur than if precipitation has just occurred.
I definitely agree with you for seismic/volcanic events, as they are similarly tied to a progressively accumulating stress to the system, and I would say that is a different case from the "100-year flood" being "statistically overdue"....but it's not so clearcut that hurricanes fall merely in the latter category.
Although I don't trust Bastardi and Accu-weather as far as I could throw Elliot Abrams, this is an interesting graphic:
