The United States Landfalling Hurricane Probability Webpage has recently been updated. Below are the major changes that have been made to the webpage:
1) Probabilities have recently been updated with data through 2004 and extending as far back as the 1850s for some regions utilizing recently-available data from the HURDAT Reanalysis Project produced by the Hurricane Research Division (HRD) and the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML). Starting dates for each region are displayed below per the recommendation of the HURDAT committee:
|
Region |
Year Start |
|
1 |
1880 |
|
2 |
1880 |
|
3 |
1880 |
|
4 |
1880 |
|
5 |
1900 |
|
6 |
1900 |
|
7 |
1880 |
|
8 |
1851 |
|
9 |
1851 |
|
10 |
1851 |
|
11 |
1851 |
2) Wind speed estimates at landfall for hurricanes have been altered slightly per the recommendation of Chris Landsea, principal investigator of the Atlantic Hurricane Reanalysis Project. Instead of using the 6-hour estimate prior to landfall from the best track database, we now take maximum wind speed estimates for hurricanes at landfall from 1851-1914 and 1980-2004 from the revised HURDAT database (http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/ushurrlist.htm). For 1915-1979, wind speeds of hurricanes at landfall are now interpolated from the Saffir-Simpson Scale category listed in the HURDAT database at landfall using the following table. For these storms, estimated maximum wind speeds were interpolated as follows:
|
Saffir-Simpson Scale Category |
Max Wind |
|
1 |
75 |
|
2 |
90 |
|
3 |
105 |
|
4 |
125 |
|
5 |
140 |
3)
Wind speed estimates for tropical storm landfalls
from 1851-1914 are now taken from the HURDAT database. For 1915-1994, tropical storm landfall
intensities are estimated from the 6-hour intensity of the storm prior to
landfall, and from 1995-2004, tropical storm landfall intensities are taken
from the National Hurricane Center Tropical Cyclone Reports.
These changes have altered our landfall probability
calculations slightly, and we feel these revised probabilities more accurately
represent the likelihood of tropical cyclone landfall for the various regions,
subregions and counties of the