As If 2024 Wasn’t Sufficiently Insane …

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We’re still several months away from the release of this year’s annual hurricane forecasts, but there’s already a superfluity of doom and gloom pronouncements emanating from the eco-radical weather industrial complex.

As usual, the purveyors of climate “science” are in search of metrics to validate their contentions … which obviously doesn’t take them long because every metric they encounter validates their contention.

Last year, forecasts called for a “near-normal” year in the tropics. Instead, we ended up with the fourth-busiest year on record. Luckily, a paucity of landfalls resulted in the least costly season in eight years – but the numbers still fell far afield of what the “experts” projected.

Courtesy of our intrepidly amazing researcher Jenn Wood, here is a look at recent tropical trends …

What’s in store for 2024? This week, AccuWeather chief meteorologist Jonathan Porter ominously warned of “serious and growing concerns” about a potential “blockbuster” and “super-charged” season this year.

“The current El Niño pattern … is forecast to transition into a La Niña pattern during the second half of the hurricane season,” Porter noted. “Any storms that do form will have the potential to rapidly strengthen, even close to land, due to the exceptionally warm waters.”

Due to the delicate El Niño-La Niña interplay, Porter and his Accuweather forecasters believe the second-half of the 2024 hurricane season will be exceptionally active.

For those of you unhip to global climate patterns, El Niño refers to the periodic warming of the central and eastern equatorial regions of the Pacific Ocean – while La Niña refers to the cooling of the Pacific that takes place in its aftermath.

What does this have to do with storms in the Atlantic tropical basin?

During El Niño years, hurricanes are less likely to form in the Atlantic due to increased vertical wind shear – or changes in wind speed and direction between 5,000 and 35,000 feet. Vertical wind shear essentially breaks apart developing hurricanes – often preventing them from forming altogether. During La Niña, the potential for hurricane formation and rapid intensification is much stronger due to reduced vertical wind shear. Basically, calmer conditions make it easier for storms to form – and intensify rapidly.

As you can see below, a strong El Niño is currently in effect but is about to give way to La Niña …

(Click to View)

(Via: Golden Gate Weather)

According to the most recent comprehensive hurricane survey (.pdf) from the S.C. Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR), South Carolina has seen 44 tropical cyclones make landfall along its coastline since 1851 – none in 2023, thankfully. Of those systems, only four (4) made landfall as major hurricanes: The 1893 Sea Islands Hurricane, Hurricane Hazel in 1954, Hurricane Gracie in 1959, and Hurricane Hugo in 1989. No category five hurricanes have ever hit the Palmetto State’s 187-mile coastline.

The Palmetto State was nearly hit in 2020 by Hurricane Isaias (or, as governor Henry McMaster called it, Hurricane “Icy Isis”). Other recent close calls included Hurricane Dorian in 2019 and Hurricane Irene in 2011.

Ian was the last hurricane to strike the Palmetto State – making landfall just south of Georgetown as a category one storm on September 30, 2022.

For those of you keeping score at home, hurricanes are categorized according to their maximum sustained wind speeds per the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale. This year, though, not even Saffir-Simpson is sufficient for the climate change doom and gloomers.

A new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States bemoaned the “open endedness of the fifth category” of the scale – i.e. hurricanes which attain maximum sustained winds of more than 157 miles per hour. Its authors mused about extending this scale to incorporate “a sixth category,” one which would “communicate that climate change has caused the winds of the most intense tropical cyclones to become significantly higher.”

Amidst a “media frenzy” surrounding the paper, the authors issued a “clarification.”

“Our motivation was simply to raise awareness that climate change is making the strongest storms stronger and increasing the risk of major hurricanes throughout the world, including the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean,” one of the scientists pushing the new categorization told meteorologist Elyse Smith of KTRK TV-13 (ABC – Houston, Texas). “We are not advocating to put a category six in the official National Hurricane Center warning categories.”

Actually, according to the paper it concluded a sixth category would “raise awareness about the perils of the increased risk of major tropical cyclones due to global warming.”

AccuWeather releases its official 2024 projections at the end of March. We will report on those as well as the “official” projections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s climate prediction center which are typically released in late May.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina and before that he was a bass guitarist and dive bar bouncer. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and seven (soon to be eight) children.

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