Hurricanes And Fake News -- August 16, 2019

Global warming ... climate change ... extreme weather ... whatever ...

First, this link: no hurricane activity for next ten days or so.

Now this, posted by hurricane watchers on August 8, 2019: their first comment --

On average, only two named storms develop in the Atlantic before August 1st arrives. The 2019 Atlantic Hurricane season has started off close to normal, with the development of Andrea, Barry, and an additional tropical depression. Barry was the most notable of the three systems, briefly reaching hurricane status as it made landfall over Louisiana in mid-July.

It should be noted that there was great controversy whether Barry actually reached hurricane status. Whether it was or not, from a forecasting point of view, another hyped story. There were any number of reports suggesting that the data was fudged -- they only needed to fudge the wind by a few knots -- to classify it as a hurricane. And that's how we get fake statistics. Barry will always be counted as a hurricane ... over time ... the controversy will be long forgotten ... Weather Channel got a lot of mileage out of that "hurricane."

August history?

August normally sees three new named storms form. Any storms that do form this month will likely develop in three regions of the Atlantic basin - the Gulf of Mexico and northern Caribbean, the area of the central Atlantic east of the Lesser Antilles, and the western Atlantic stretching from the Bahamas northward along Florida and up to the Carolinas.

Interestingly enough, the writers had to stretch the data a bit for last year, trying to "tie" a September storm as an "August" storm:

 Last August featured the development of three named storms, one of which had a major U.S. impact after the calender flipped into September.