Something To Consider!!!

While this hurricane season has gotten off to a slow start I remind everyone of an old saying, "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog". Basically I'm saying that even though the hurricane numbers are down this year all it takes is one bad storm to make it a historical year... In 2004 the first storm of the season (Alex) didn't formed until Aug 1st and that year turned out pretty darn bad... Now look that was a much different setup and I DON'T see anything even close to that this year (maybe 8-10 storms tops)... However it just goes to show that sometimes the season explodes at a moments notice...

Also a quick note about El Nino and this years hurricane season... Keep in mind that it's simple to say, "well El Nino is going to kill the hurricane season"... That may be the case in certain years/setups, however in this particular year/set-up El Nino is NOT driving the hurricane season, El Nino is being driven by other factors in the Pacific and Atlantic which in turn is driving this years hurricane season... The warm water in the Pacific is much more displaced towards the central Pacific due to strong easterly winds keeping the eastern Pacific only slightly above normal... The long range forecast keeps showing this trend so again like everything in weather, this years El Nino is not typical but actually very unique... It will be interesting to see how this not only plays into the hurricane season but the upcoming winter as well... The long range models show a cold winter for the east coast and the deep south!!! Also matching analog years are showing a similar setup...

Before I go lets look at the 3 landfalling Catergory-5 hurricanes in US recorded history:

1935 Hurricane Season:

There was only 6 named storms this year but yet one was a landfallling Category-5 hurricane! The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane is still to this day the strongest hurricane to ever strike the US mainland (892mb at landfall). Ironically the only two hits that year were in South Florida...

1969 Hurricane Season:

This was actually a weak El Nino setup similar to 2004 but again it's not similar to the current El Nino setup impacting us right now... There were 17 named storms this year but only 2 landfalling hurricanes... Unfortunately one was Hurricane Camille.... We all know how that turned out! :-(

1992 Hurricane Season:

Like 1935 there were only 6 named storms... But unfortunately like 1935 one of those storms was a US landfalling Category-5 hurricane known as ANDREW!!! Also keep in mind that Andrew didn't even form until August 17th... Pretty late in the season for a first named storm...

Bottom line, try not to get caught up in the numbers... Even if you have 50 named storms in a year, it is really a bad year for the US if none of those storms strike the coast? I say NO!!! All it takes is one bad hurricane so keep that in mind this year... I'm not wishing this on anyone but I have to say I have a bad feeling one is going to slip through this year... Hopefully not, but again it only takes one bad hurricane to make a season HISTORIC!!!