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When the Hurricanes Come

Posted by Stuart Staniford on June 10, 2006 - 1:36pm
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: hurricanes, peak oil [list all tags]

Now that the hurricane season had started, I wanted to know if there's much chance of one in June. Not really, it turns out:

Average number of storm tracks (any category) on a given day in each month over the period 1851-2005. Source: NOAA NHC.

Update [2006-6-10 13:36:2 by Stuart Staniford]: Well, what do you know - here's Tropical Depression One:

Update [2006-6-11 18:12:55 by Stuart Staniford]: Now Tropical Storm Alberto.

Projected three day track of tropical depression ONE. Source: NOAA NHC.

Update [2006-6-12 12:48:38 by Stuart Staniford]: "ALBERTO HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BECOME A HURRICANE WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS."

The graph was made by parsing the HURDAT data file of past tracks made available by the National Hurricane Center. I'll probably do more mining on this data in the future, but for now the graph above just shows the average number of storm tracks present in the Atlantic on a given day, by month. (This includes all the wimpy storms as well as the real hurricanes, just to get a sense of when things can happen).

Checking in with SSTs, the big temperature anomaly in the Gulf a month or two ago seems to have mostly dissipated:

SSTs in the tropical Atlantic, together with anomaly from average. Source: NOAA.

However, it's still warm all across the tropical Atlantic.

Finally, I can't resist reposting this graph I put in a comment on HO's thread:

Oil and NG production in the Gulf of Mexico, together with hurricanes and tropical storms in the region. Source: EIA.

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