Recent tropical activity has pushed the current hurricane season back above average, but by at least one measurement, it may still reach ‘extreme’ levels.
The long-range computer forecast models continue to show the possibility of a low-pressure area developing in the Caribbean in early November. Most show it weak and unthreatening, while the easily excitable American GFS model shows the system eventually developing into a significant storm.
In any case, nothing is imminent. We’re good through Halloween, at least.
No tropics activity predicted for the next seven days
(National Hurricane Center)
I am frequently asked what I think about the apparent hurricane outbreak we’ve seen over the past several years. My answer is that we’re lucky the storms haven’t been worse.
Reading history, we know that dramatic and destructive hurricanes have hit every part of Florida over the past couple of hundred years. But in relatively recent decades, the storms went somewhere else, while we built expensive properties in vulnerable areas as if those historic hurricanes couldn’t happen again. Lately, Mother Nature seems determined to remind us who’s in charge.
The same thing is true of the entire Hurricane Coast from Texas to New England. Hurricanes have happened in the past, and there’s no reason to think they won’t happen in the future.
New England hurricanes have been well-documented since the time of the Pilgrims. New York City and the surrounding area have been hit hard several times. Louisiana’s coastline has been rearranged by repeated storms. In Texas, a place called Indianola was wiped off the map by two powerful hurricanes in 11 years. All that’s there now to remember the thriving town is a historical marker.
These days, hurricanes are forming in a warmer atmosphere and over an ocean with more heat energy to power stronger winds, of course. So the storms that form become more intense, everything else being equal. In addition, the extra warm air holds more water, which means heavier rain and more flooding.
Which brings up the obvious question of whether climate change caused the recent destructive hurricanes to form. There is no evidence of that. Hurricanes have been hitting Florida since the peninsula formed. As the famous Dr. Bill Gray used to say, Florida sticks out into hurricane alley like a sore thumb.
The big difference today is the tremendous investment in livelihoods, property, and infrastructure along the coast. So when a hurricane comes along, like they always have, it does tremendous damage. Yes, it does more damage than it would have if we weren’t warming the Earth, but the primary costly and dangerous mix is hurricanes and coastal development.
The other reality that puts a fine point on the problem is that as bad as these hurricanes have been, when you look at population centers, they haven’t been worst-case storms.
Hurricane Michael destroyed Mexico Beach but largely missed populated Panama City Beach. Hurricane Ian destroyed Fort Myers Beach but was weakening as it came ashore, and the corridor of strongest winds missed densely populated Fort Myers, Cape Coral, and Naples. Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton did significant damage along coastal sections in the Tampa Bay area, but it was nothing compared to what would have happened in a repeat of the two-hurricane pounding the region took in 1848.
Living in Florida has always meant living with hurricanes… eventually. If we’re going to successfully live where history and science tell us we’re vulnerable to storm surge, violent winds, and flooding rain, we have to build and adapt to that reality. There is no obvious Plan B.
There is no way to know if the hurricanes will continue to focus on the Gulf Coast. But they might. South Florida was pummeled by storms over and over again in the first 7 decades of the 20th century. That includes 7 hurricanes between 1945 and 1950 – 5 of them Category 4. In 1954, 1955, and 1960, there was a hurricane onslaught in the Northeast and New England. So it happens.
If it’s not obvious, nobody is manufacturing or controlling hurricanes today any more than they did 50, 100, or 1000 years ago. Hurricanes happen. They always have. The message is simple. Have a plan. Be ready.