Photo Credit – NOAA
# 5555
The nightmarish radar picture above is something no one wants to see repeated this year, yet the potential for seeing a major hurricane somewhere along the Atlantic or Gulf coast is substantial every year.
With the 2011 Atlantic Tropical season just two weeks away (although it doesn’t reach its peak until September), it isn’t too soon to begin to prepare.
Over the next couple of weeks I’ll have a good deal on hurricane preparedness, but today, an interesting tool I’ve been playing with the past couple of years:
The United States landfalling hurricane web project which has been co-developed by William Gray's Tropical Meteorology Research Project at Colorado State University and the GeoGraphics Laboratory at Bridgewater State College.
Based on a combination of historical climatological data, along with Dr. Gray’s updated forecast for 2011, this website provides Tropical Storm, Hurricane, and Major Hurricane landfalling probabilities for 11 regions and 205 counties along the U.S. coastline from Texas to Maine.
Much of this data is downloadable in Microsoft Excel format for your own study.
The `interactive’ portion of the website allows you to input your state and county, and get a readout of the strike probabilities for the upcoming tropical season.
These are, of course, just probabilities.
A low-probability rating is no guarantee that a storm won’t strike your region this year.
These are interesting calculations, but a low probability rating is not something you should base your decision on whether you will prepare for hurricane season this year.
I’ve run the calculator for the Tampa bay area (Pinellas County), and here are the results (Historic climatology percentages are in parentheses).
First, the overall state of Florida’s calculation. A 71% chance of a landfalling hurricane this year, and more than 33% chance of a Major Hurricane.
Next, specific data for Pinellas County (slightly reformatted).
During the last century, there were 73 major landfalling hurricanes from Texas to Maine. Some areas of the coastline were spared (areas 7 & 9), but that is no guarantee that a storm won’t hit there sometime in the future.
Hurricane season predictions are improving, but are a long way off from being something you can bank on. Every year could be the year that a hurricane strikes your region, regardless of the odds.
Each year a number of entities release their Atlantic Tropical Long-range Outlook. Not exactly a forecast, but hopefully an indication of the kind of season we can expect.
One of the longest running, and best known, comes from Dr. William Gray at Colorado State University’s Tropical Meteorology Project.
This year, he and his team are calling for an above average Atlantic tropical season with an above-average probability of United States and Caribbean major hurricane landfall.
Gray’s team will issue an updated outlook in early June, and in August (when the season should grain momentum) begin issuing Two-Week Forecasts for hurricane activity until October.
For Hurricane preparedness information visit Ready.gov’s Hurricane Preparedness page.
- Hurricane Preparedness Week
- Steps you can take to protect your family, property or business
- Recommended Training
- Additional Resources
Hurricane Preparedness Week (May 22 – 28, 2011)
President Obama declared May 22-28 “National Hurricane Preparedness Week." FEMA, along with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is helping to raise awareness of steps that can be taken to help protect citizens, and their communities and property. Please refer to the FEMA Blog for daily updates on what the Agency and our partners are doing to prepare for the 2011 Hurricane Season.
- NOAA will release its initial seasonal outlook for the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season on May 19, 2011 in Suitland, Maryland. NOAA Administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco will discuss the outlook with FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate highlighting the critical need for storm preparedness.
As I do every year, I’ll be blogging fairly extensively on preparedness issues during Hurricane Preparedness Week (May 22 – 28, 2011).
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