By The Numbers: August 19, 2011
- With today's designation of TS Harvey, the 2011 North Atlantic Hurricane Season is off to a wild (in terms of number of storms) yet mild (in terms of Accumulated Cyclone Energy, or ACE). Climatologically-speaking--that is, from 1966 through 2009--we can expect the eighth named storm of the season on September 24. 2011 is, thus, five weeks ahead of schedule. However, also climatologically-speaking, the first hurricane from the aforementioned 1966-2009 period has appeared on August 10, so 2011 is a week and a half behind. As I said, both wild and mild.
- 2005--the busiest hurricane season ever--saw the tenth storm of that season, Jose, named on August 22nd. As I write this on August 19th, there are two possible Jose candidates; if either is named in the next three days, 2011 will (obviously) be tied with 2005 in terms of named storms. However, all of 2011's storms to-date have been relative weaklings--and that takes us to my next point:
- In 2005, the first seven named storms--Arlene through Irene--accumulated 61.85 ACE units, for a per-storm average of 8.78. By comparison, the first seven storms this year have averaged 1.79 ACE units, for a total of 12.5.
- Speaking of per-storm ACE, here's this year's to-date tally ordered by ACE:
BRET: 2.9450
ARLENE: 1.9875
EMILY: 1.9875
CINDY: 1.8800
DON: 1.7000
GERT: 1.6025
FRANKLIN: 0.4050
HARVEY: 0.1600
- A lot of people have been talking about how odd it is that none of 2011's storms to date have been able to make it to hurricane status. That's definitely remarkable. But of some note is the fact that every tropical depression this year has become a named storm. Over the past 16 seasons, that's only happened six times.
Thanks for stopping by, visitor 
!
--Neapolitan
Reader Comments
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3 T-Storms Stepping
Loop
Will be interesting to see how this season plays out as we compare it with 2005.
Thanks, Neap.
Merry Christmas, Jim!
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