Hurricane Dean: 1 Of 10 Most Intense Atlantic Hurricanes Ever Measured

Chris Mooney

Dean now takes its rank among the top ten most intense Atlantic hurricanes. If you look at that list you’ll see that six of the strongest (Wilma, Rita, Katrina, Mitch, Dean, and Ivan) have been in the past ten years. That’s not the kind of statistic that’s easy to overlook. According to these data we are getting more super-strong storms in the Atlantic basin than we ever have before.


[..]And what about the global perspective? Well, according to my ongoing “Storm Pundit” count of mega-hurricanes, Dean is the 10th Category 4 or 5 tropical cyclone observed globally this year. There have also been two borderline Category 3/Category 4 storms in my estimation. Here’s my tally of the data on intense storms in all the global hurricane basins, which is based upon the Unisys database of so-called hurricane best track records and supplemented by other data[..]


[..]I discuss in detail in my book Storm World — some scientists argue that the total number of the most intense hurricanes occurring annually is on the rise due to global warming and its heating of the oceans. 2007 isn’t over yet, but in this ongoing debate, this year’s complete tally of intense storms will serve as an important data point. That’s where Dean and its cousins fit in.


At least by my own count, there were 19 of these intense storms in 2006, 22 in 2005, and 23 in 2004. Hurricane specialist Jeff Masters says the long term average is 17 — in which case all of these years would be above it and we might indeed be looking at a trend.


It remains to be seen how 2007 will ultimately look when compared with these global totals for the past 3 years. But we can count on some more very strong storms this year. Not only do we expect more action from the Atlantic, Northeast Pacific, and especially the highly active Northwest Pacific, but we could also get a strong North Indian storm later this year. Finally, once the southern hemisphere summer rolls in around November and December, we might even get an intense storm or two rotating the other direction on the other side of the equator.