Kevin's Blog

As winter strangled most of the country this past weekend, we said goodbye to another record setting hurricane season in the Atlantic Basin. 

Just like finely tuned athletes in the off-season, or coaches pouring over game film, the "hot-stove league" for tropical meteorologists consists of evaluating volumes of data from each storm. These data include every forecast decision, aircraft report, sea surface temperature, satellite observation, etc., all in hopes of improving our understanding of these storms as well as our ability to forecast them.  

Two prominent names that are on the potential off-season trading block are Saffir and Simpson. The Saffir-Simpson scale (Category 1 to Category 5) has been in use at the National Hurricane Center for over 30 years. After somewhat misleading performances in Hurricanes Katrina in 2005 and Ike this year, there is a strong sentiment to make a change to a different hurricane rating system in 2009.

Should the NHC retire Saffir-Simpson in favor of these upstarts, we will let you know here at Fox Weather. There will likely be an adjustment period as coastal residents and emergency managers get used to this new starting rotation.

2008 - The Season in Review

A total of 16 named storms formed in 2008. The storms included eight hurricanes, five of which were major hurricanes at Category 3 strength or higher.

Here is a map of all of this season's tropical storm and hurricane tracks from our friends at the National Hurricane Center.



Overall, the season was the fourth most active in terms of named storms and major hurricanes, and was the fifth most active in terms of hurricanes since 1944. We use 1944 as our starting point in hurricane record keeping because it was the first year that aircraft were used to locate and study these storms.

For the first time on record, six consecutive storms (Dolly, Edouard, Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike) made landfall on the U.S. mainland, and a record three major hurricanes (Gustav, Ike and Paloma) struck Cuba.

This is also the first Atlantic hurricane season to have a major hurricane form in five consecutive months (July: Bertha, August: Gustav, September: Ike, October: Omar, November: Paloma).

For the 10th time in the last 14 years, the number of named storms was above the climatological average of ten storms.

If you have any questions about the 2008 Hurricane season, or the changes that may take place this off-season in hurricane rating methods, let us know!

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