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Major revisions to the Atlantic basin hurricane database (known
as HURDAT) have just been completed for the second half of the
19th century and early 20th century and have turned up some interesting
facts. For example, the busiest hurricane season ever recorded
in the United States was 1886, which saw seven hurricanes make
landfall—including one Category 4 hurricane that hit Texas.
HURDAT is the official record of tropical storms and hurricanes for the Atlantic
Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, including those that have made landfall
in the United States. Every year, the NOAA National Hurricane Center, which maintains
HURDAT, adds data from the most recent season. This database is used for a variety
of purposes, including setting of appropriate building codes for coastal zones,
risk assessment for emergency managers, analysis of potential losses for insurance
and business interests, intensity forecasting techniques, verification of official
and model predictions of track and intensity, seasonal forecasting and climatic
change studies.
HURDAT has been updated only twice before. The first time was in 2001 when data
for years 1851 to 1885 were added to the database. The second time was August
2002 when Hurricane Andrew was upgraded to a Category 5.
REANALYSIS AND CORRECTION
“There are many reasons why a reanalysis of the HURDAT dataset is both
needed and timely,” said Chris Landsea, a research meteorologist with the
NOAA Hurricane Research Division and lead scientist on the project. “HURDAT
contained many systematic and random errors that needed correction. Additionally,
as our understanding of tropical cyclones had developed, analysis techniques
at the NOAA National Hurricane Center changed over the years and led to biases
in the historical database that had not been addressed. Another difficulty in
applying the hurricane database to studies concerned with landfalling events
was the lack of exact location, time and intensity information at landfall.
“Finally, recent efforts led by the late Jose Fernandez-Partagas, a Cuban
research meteorologist in Miami, FL, uncovered previously undocumented historical
tropical cyclones in the mid-1800s to early 1900s that have greatly increased
our knowledge of these past events, which also had not been incorporated into
the HURDAT database.”
More than 5,000 additions and alterations were approved for the years 1851 to
1910 by the NOAA National Hurricane Center’s Best Track Change Committee.
This same process was used for the upgrade of 1992’s Hurricane Andrew to
a Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale in August 2002.
In addition to the groundbreaking work by Partagas, additional analyses, digitization
and quality control of the data was carried out by researchers at the NOAA Hurricane
Research Division funded by the NOAA Office of Global Programs. Over the next
two years, this re-analysis will continue to progress through the remainder of
the 20th Century.
WHAT’S IN HURDAT?
The following is an example of some of the information contained in HURDAT.
1. Busiest hurricane season ever for the United States: The 1886 hurricane season
has been analyzed to be the busiest on record for the continental United States.
Seven hurricanes were recorded to have hit the U.S.
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One Category 2 hurricane into Texas and Louisiana in June
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Two Category 2 hurricanes into northwest Florida in June
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One Category 1 hurricane into northwest Florida in July
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One Category 4 hurricane into Texas in August
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One Category 1 hurricane into Texas in September
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One Category 3 hurricane into Louisiana in October.
The previous busiest hurricane season for the United States was 1985 with six
hurricanes making landfall.
2. Busy decade for the United States Atlantic seaboard: The 1890s was one of
the busiest decades on record for the Atlantic seaboard of the United States.
Four major hurricanes impacted the coast from Georgia northward:
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1893: Category 3 Sea Islands Hurricane in Georgia and South Carolina and another
Category 3 in South Carolina and North Carolina the same year.
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1898: Category 4 in Georgia
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1899: Category 3 in North Carolina.
Only the decade of the 1950s had more strong hurricanes making landfall along
this part of the coast, going back to 1851.
3. Cycles of hurricane activity: These records reflect the existence of cycles
of hurricane activity, rather than trends toward more frequent or stronger hurricanes.
In general, the period of the 1850s to the mid-1860s was quiet. The late 1860s
through the 1890s were busy, and the first decade of the 1900s was quiet. (There
were five hurricane seasons with at least 10 hurricanes per year in the active
period of the late 1860s to the 1890s and none in the quiet periods.)
Earlier work had linked these cycles of busy and quiet hurricane periods in the
20th Century to natural changes in Atlantic Ocean temperatures.
4. First time categorization of catastrophic 19th-century U.S. landfalling
hurricanes: Several catastrophic hurricanes were categorized for the first time by the Saffir-Simpson
Hurricane Scale.
These included the “Chenier Caminanda Hurricane”* that struck Louisiana
in 1893 and killed about 2,000 people, which was assigned a Category 4 at landfall;
the 1893 “Sea Islands Hurricane” killed 1,000 to 2,000 people in
Georgia and South Carolina and was ranked a Category 3 for its impact in both
states; a hurricane in 1881 that also impacted Georgia and South Carolina and
killed about 700 people was assigned Category 2 status.
These hurricanes rank Nos. 2, 4 and 5, respectively, in the largest number of
fatalities for continental U.S. landfalling tropical storms and hurricanes ever.
5. Strongest U.S. landfalling hurricane of the 1851 to 1910 era: The 1886 “Indianola” hurricane
was analyzed as having 155-mph maximum sustained winds, a Saffir-Simpson Hurricane
Scale Category 4 (approaching Category 5) and was the strongest to strike the
United States between 1851 and 1910. This hurricane destroyed the town of Indianola,
TX, due to its winds and 15-foot storm surge. The town was never rebuilt.
This also was the strongest hurricane of record anywhere in the Atlantic, Gulf
of Mexico or Caribbean Sea during the same time period. (No Category 5 hurricanes
were recorded to have hit the United States between 1851 and 1910. However, records
are somewhat incomplete along in Gulf Coast and Florida because there were some
coastal regions with few to no inhabitants. Thus, there may be a few systems
misdiagnosed in intensity in that period.)
6. Longest lasting hurricane on record: Storm No. 3 (also known as the “San
Ciriaco” hurricane for its impact in Puerto Rico) in 1899 has been re-analyzed
to now tie the record for longest lasting tropical cyclone in the Atlantic basin.
It began on August 3 in the tropical North Atlantic, hit Puerto Rico as a Category
4 hurricane on August 8, hit North Carolina as a Category 3 hurricane on August
18, transformed into an extratropical system north of Bermuda on August 21, redeveloped
into a tropical storm on August 26, went through the Azores Islands as a Category
1 hurricane on September 3 and finally dissipated as an extratropical storm on
September 4.
It was a storm system for 33 days and a tropical storm or hurricane for 28 of
those days. This ties the record with Hurricane Ginger of 1971, which also was
a tropical cyclone for 28 days.
7. Most hurricanes ever in one day: On August 22, 1893, four hurricanes were
occurring simultaneously. Storm No. 3 approaching Nova Scotia, Canada; Storm
No. 4 between Bermuda and the Bahamas; Storm No. 6 northeast of the Lesser Antilles;
and Storm No. 7 west of the Cape Verde Islands.
Storm No. 4 would end up making a direct hit on New York City as a Category 1
hurricane two days later and Storm No. 6 ended up hitting Georgia and South Carolina
as a Category 3 hurricane (the “Sea Islands Hurricane”) and killing
1,000 to 2,000 people.
The only other known date with four hurricanes occurring at the same time was
September 25, 1998, when hurricanes Georges, Ivan, Jeanne and Karl were in existence.
* Tropical storms and hurricanes were not formally given names until the 1950
hurricane season. Before this time, individual systems were sometimes known for
the location that they impacted (e.g., the “Indianola” hurricane
of 1886 for its impact in the town of Indianola, TX) or by the day of the saint
for hurricanes that hit Hispanic locations (e.g., “San Ciriaco” for
an 1899 hurricane hitting Puerto Rico on August 8).
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