Florida Major Hurricanes, 1900-2024: What Do the Statistics Show?
October 7th, 2024 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
Florida residents must feel like they have been taking a beating from major hurricanes in recent years, but what do the data show?
The problem with human perception of such things is that the time scale of hurricane activity fluctuations is often longer than human experience. For example, a person born in the 1950s would have no memory of the beating Florida took in the 1940s from major hurricanes (a total of 5). But they would have many memories of the hurricane lull period of the 1970s and 1980s, each decade having only one major hurricane strike in Florida. Then, when an upswing in hurricane strikes occurs, it seems very unusual to them, and they assume that “hurricanes are getting worse”.
Another problem is that any statistics for an area as small as Florida, even over 100+ years, will be pretty noisy. Landfalling hurricanes for the eastern U.S. would be a better metric. And statistics for the entire Atlantic basin would be even better, except that satellite coverage didn’t start until the 1970s and hurricane intensity in remote areas before then would be poorly measured (or not measured at all).
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2024/10/florida-major-hurricanes-1900-2024-what-do-the-statistics-show/
