Hurricane Season forecast is it useful?

By now you have heard the the government forecast for the upcoming hurricane season is out. Here is what it looks like.

These numbers are very high for the entire season and on the high end of the scale 23 would mean about an average of one named storm per week during the 24 week hurricane season. On the low end it’s still above the average number of storms you would expect in an average year. The numbers though are deceiving and really not very useful. While it is true the more storms we have in the Atlantic basin the higher the probability you might be affected statistically speaking. It should also be noted that the Atlantic basin is huge. The forecast is for the total number of storms in the entire map to the right. The more important part of the forecast is where will all these storms go. While the science of forecasting has gotten better and both Dr. Gray and Colorado State and NOAA try to forecast the landfalls. That part doesn’t get the headlines or even much attention in your local paper or newscast. If you are looking just at the number than it is pretty useless. The reason is that a “bad” hurricane season doesn’t necessarily mean and “active” or “busy” season. Those terms are not interchangeable and we shouldn’t think that they are.

To explain why I think this lets take 2 hurricanes season and compare them just using the number of storms and hurricanes.

Season #1 =   6 named storms  |  4 Hurricanes

Season #2 =  15 named storm   |  8 Hurricanes

So which season was worse #1 with just 6 storms and 4 hurricanes or season #2 with almost double both?

Answer:

Season #1

Only one hurricane made a U.S. landfall this year but it just so happen to be Hurricane Andrew and up until Hurricane Katrina was the costliest hurricane to strike the U.S. in our history.

Season #2 had 15 named storms and no U.S. landfall of a single Hurricane. Goes to show that number of storms can be irrelevant.