I’ve looked all over for aggregate historical data about hurricane landfall during specific times of year. I figure that if there is a “hurricane season”, then the incidences of hurricanes are likely to taper off near the ends of the season. If that’s the case, the chance of seeing any really foul weather while on our trip would depend on where it fell within the season, right?
Well, I stopped over at NOAA, and I found a presumably interactive map with historical data about hurricane tracks. Unfortunately, the map seems to be inaccessible.
MSN has a feature on hurricanes today, prompted by Francis’ immenent landfall. It gives all of the basic information - what is a hurricane? where do the names come from? what causes a hurricane? Also included is the duration of hurricane season, which is June 1st through November 30th. This is not a good sign, even though the height of the storms occur during August and September.
The MSN page also gives information on the extremes of hurricane season duration, like the earliest date that hurricane season has ended in a year. Unfortunately, they don’t provide the detailed information I want, just the extremes.
What I’d really like is a calendar that shows the percentage of recorded dates during which a hurricane was on land during that day. So if for the past 100 years on October 5th there was an active hurricane 3% of the time, the calendar would say “3”. This is a number that would make me feel good about my vacation plans, but I’m going to guess that this number is more near 50.
But then I found a hurricane probability map at USA Today via this general hurricane info page. The probability of a hurricane hitting the Orlando area during the entire month of October is somewhere around 12%. That’s not too bad.
Considering that the average temperature in Orlando in October is 75 degrees, it might all turn out ok. Weather-wise, at least.
