2004 Hurricane Season Broke Records; 2005 Impossible To Predict

December 6, 2004

It’s unnecessary to crunch figures to determine that hurricane damages from the five storms that hit the continental U.S. this year will exceed $25 billion and that the 2004 hurricane season will go into the record books as one of the most active on record.

Researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Miami haven’t really determined yet if 2004 will be the most active on record, but it’s definitely in the top two or three.

The 2004 hurricane season compares to 1950, shen there were eight major hurricanes. Before this year the only other season to approach 1950 was 1995, which produced five major hurricanes.

Meteorologist William Gray of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, a pioneer in long-range hurricane forecasting predicts there might not be another hurricane season like this for 100 years.

Gray and other researchers note that hurricane seasons run in 25-year cycles of alternating active and less-active seasons. Meteorologists think a new cycle of active seasons started in 1995.
There’s no way of knowing whether the 2005 season will be similar to this year’s.

Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Hurricane

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