Hurricane Earl on Wednesday, shortly before it made landfall in Belize. (credit: NOAA)
On Thursday some meteorologists (who are by nature a cheesy lot) had an opportunity to channel their inner Dixie Chick and sing “Goodbye Earl” as yet another hurricane went into the Yucatan Peninsula to die. Most of the rest of the United States yawned—another hurricane in the Atlantic, and no harm done.
But the hurricane was remarkable precisely because of this. Earl, which attained a maximum wind speed of 80 mph before striking Belize, marked another in a long line of hurricanes that have formed in the Atlantic basin—the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico—but have not affected the United States.
Consider some of the following statistics: the last hurricane to reach the Gulf of Mexico was Ingrid in September, 2013. The current, nearly three-year-long drought for the Gulf has not been equaled since at least 1851. The drought in hurricanes that make Florida landfalls is even more pronounced. The Sunshine State, which juts into the Atlantic Ocean like a lightning rod for tropical weather, has not been hit by a hurricane since Wilma (2005). Earl was in fact the 67th Atlantic hurricane in a row to not make landfall in Florida, according to hurricane scientist Phil Klotzbach. The previous record was a mere 33 hurricanes, a streak between Hurricanes David (1979) and Elena (1985).
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Source: Ars Technica – No major US hurricanes in 11 years. Odds of that? 1-in-2,300.