Hurricanes: How much longer can luck last?
On eve of hurricane season, a threat brews off Southeast coast.
That a named tropical storm will form off the East Coast almost any time is all but a certainty, according to the National Hurricane Center.
In its Friday morning update it sees a 90 percent chance that a swirling mass of convection will become the second tropical storm of the year to earn the name – meaning it has winds of at least 39 m.p.h. – Bonnie.
It would be No. 2 because Alex became a rare winter hurricane back in January, albeit a generally harmless one.
The hurricane center also is advising coastal residents from Georgia to North Carolina to be alert and alive and to monitor the progress as the Bonnie-to-be ripens in a juicier environment.
Fittingly, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is issuing its annual hurricane forecast just before lunchtime Friday.
Assuming it tracks the other forecasts we've seen, and everyone appears to be playing from roughly the same playbook, it will call for an average or slightly above-average season.
What it can't address with any degree of scientific honesty is how many of those storms might come crasthing into the U.S. mainland.
We will remind our readers that the nation is riding a remarkable wave of luck – Sandy, notwithstanding; when it made landfall, technically it was not a hurricane.
Since 2005, not a single major hurricane, one with winds of 111 m.p.h. or more, has attacked U.S. shores, a record run of quiet, even though some of the seasons have been active.
Not a single hurricane of any strength in that time has made it to the Sunshine State, also a record; tropical-storm records date to the mid-19th Century.
Simple mathematical probabilities suggest that is going to change. On average, 11 named storms form in the basin, which includes the Gulf and Caribbean, with six becoming hurricanes, and two them majors.
The 2015 season was a quiet one in part because of the El Nino warming in the tropical Pacific that generated strong winds from the west that can ambush incipient storms in the Atlantic Basin.
That El Nino is dissipating, and might even yield to a La Nina cooling event, which is favorable to tropical development in the Atlantic.
The future of hurricanes is of importance for the entire nation, since tropical storms are far and away the major consumers of disaster dollars.
The link between worldwide warming and hurricanes remains the subject of research, but humans unquestionably have contributed to the growing disaster price tag.
At last count, an estimated $10 trillion worth of insured property inhabits hurricane-target areas.