Comments on: Look at This: Every Recorded Hurricane Since 1851 on One Map

By: Kevin

Kevin — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 06:00:21 +0000

I’m wondering, I’m not seeing the 1858 San Diego hurricane there, That one apparently was reconstructed to have just missed the coast, but was a hurricane when it caused great damage from wind and rain in san diego and proceded north. I see no dots anywhere near that track.

By: Hmmm

Hmmm — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 22:14:58 +0000

@stargene as you noted the intensity of the 6-7 decades appears to be getting stronger with less fluctation. This map is only rccorded storms starting in 1851, so there may be quite a few that were not recorded and also the graph appears to coincide with the advancement of technology. I know they did not have radar before the 1940′s and am not sure when they started using radar for weather. Also doppler radar has not been used except for maybe a decade or two.

So is the intensity and lower variance of storms an independant variable or is it related to better technology being able to get better measure of the storms?

By: stargene

stargene — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 02:39:30 +0000

I believe the individual dots along a given curvy trackway represent
the positions and also the strengths (ie: class 1,2,..5) of individual
storms in their individual chronologies.

Two things I hadn’t known before… (1) the high number of such storms
churning up the west coast of Mexico and the USA and then moving
west over the Pacific… (2) and the existence of a separate storm belt,
one end of which seems to start off the eastern tip of South Africa
and which then curves over through the southern Indian Ocean,
passing between Australia and Indonesia and ends in the central
South Pacific!

More somberly, the fraction of high intensity storms clearly gets
more constant, with far less fluctuation, in the last six or seven
decades. See the graph on the lower right.

By: anothercindy

anothercindy — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 23:55:25 +0000

It’s preeety! Not so good for information, but cool.

By: John Lerch

John Lerch — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 17:33:09 +0000

How does a hurricane be just a dot? Is the dot the day it became a hurricane with the color the eventual strength? Or what?

By: Margaret

Margaret — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 13:45:00 +0000

Not unlike the beauty received from Hubble.

By: Ozonator aka Robert Rhodes

Ozonator aka Robert Rhodes — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 20:52:51 +0000

Have the extremist Republicans and Christians aka deniers have had a chance to review this? They always say there is hurricane inflation and practice ignoring most hurricanes outside the US. At least show it to the RNC venue committee.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 16:35:13 +0000

Also what is with the weird map perspective?

By: Sue

Sue — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 14:17:28 +0000

Thanks for giving us the link to the high resolution version. It is spectacular!

By: John Tate

John Tate — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 13:44:51 +0000

It would’ve been nicer if the continents weren’t so darn dark and nearly invisible!