News - Blogs - Busy hurricane season comes to an end

Busy hurricane season comes to an end
Published: 11/29/2011 1:00 PM
Last Modified: 11/29/2011 1:06 PM

Hurricane Irene made landfall at approximately 7:30 am EDT on Aug. 27, 2011, near Cape Lookout, N.C. with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph (Category 1). This NOAA GOES-13 satellite image captures Irene?s landfall moment. Courtesy: NOAA

We’re seeing freezing temperatures, parts of the country are seeing some good snowfall (including Memphis, where my friend believed she was escaping the snowy Kansas winters…ha!), but lets talk about the tropics.

Tomorrow marks the last day of the 2011 hurricane season, and it’s been a memorable one. Let’s take a look.

Now, if that isn’t the best weather video you’ve seen today, please share it with us. (Also, watch it again and keep an eye on Oklahoma. Notice the lack of clouds and rainfall that led to one of the worse droughts we've seen.)

The animation shows images from the GOES-13 satellite that is taken every 30 minutes starting on June 1—the beginning of the season—to Nov. 28, courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In it, you see all 19 of the named storms in the Atlantic.

Yes, 19 named storms. In case you’re wondering, that is a lot. It’s the third highest total since records began in 1851, tied with 1887, 1995, and 2010. The average hurricane season has 11 named storms.

So, lots of storms. But the number of big storms—hurricanes and major hurricanes—was slightly above average. There were seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. The average is six and two, respectively.

The biggest news out of hurricane season this year was what officials are calling the end of “hurricane amnesia.” It was broken rather violently with Hurricane Irene, which tore up the eastern seaboard.

Hurricane amnesia is the trendy way to say the United States hasn’t been hit by a hurricane since Hurricane Ike hit Texas in 2008. It may be hard to believe, since we see a lot about the storms as they slam the Caribbean, but Ike was the last one. And Irene was also the most significant storm to hit the northeast since Hurricane Bob in 1991.

And landfall of what is considered a major hurricane, with winds of 111 mph or higher, hasn’t happened since Hurricane Wilma in 2005.

At the beginning of the season, forecasters were concerned about that lapse, worried that people would not take hurricanes as serious as they should. Perhaps Irene changed that.

There isn’t a specific forecast for the 2012 season yet, but if the past few years are any indication, there will be several storms and they will likely be pretty dicey.

--Jerry Wofford

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Almanac

Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun
Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec

	Temperature		Precipitation
Date	High Temp	Low Temp	Total	Month to date	Historical average
1	44°	16°	0	0.00	0.05
2	59°	24°	0	0.00	0.11
3	57°	33°	0	0.00	0.16
4	68°	37°	Trace	0.00	0.21
5	69°	29°	0	0.00	0.26
6	66°	33°	0	0.00	0.32
7	59°	38°	0.05	0.05	0.38
8	51°	34°	0	0.05	0.44
9	44°	36°	0.01	0.06	0.51
10	62°	37°	0.07	0.13	0.57
11	54°	28°	0	0.13	0.64
12	44°	30°	0.25	0.38	0.70
13	55°	40°	0.01	0.39	0.76
14	°	°			0.83
15	°	°			0.89
16	°	°			0.95
17	°	°			1.02
18	°	°			1.09
19	°	°			1.16
20	°	°			1.23
21	°	°			1.31
22	°	°			1.38
23	°	°			1.46
24	°	°			1.53
25	°	°			1.61
26	°	°			1.69
27	°	°			1.77
28	°	°			1.85

TEMPERATURE

RAINFALL

SNOWFALL

Weather World

Follow Jerry Wofford on Twitter for updates during severe weather conditions.

Tulsa weather milestones of 2013 (as of Feb. 12)

Highest temperature: 70 on Jan. 11 (Record: 115 on Aug. 15, 1936)
Lowest temperature: 15 on Jan. 16 (Record: Minus-16 on Jan. 22, 1930)
Hottest month (average): 40.5 degrees in January (Record: 91.7 degrees on July 1980)
Coldest month (average): 40. 5 degrees in January (Record: 21.7 in January 1918)
Most snowfall (day): 0.1 of an inch on Feb. 12(Record: 13.2 inches on Feb. 1, 2011)
Most snowfall (month): 0.1 of an inch in February(Record: 22.5 inches in February 2011)
Most rainfall (day): 0.91 of an inch on Jan. 29 (Record: 9.27 inches on May 26-27, 1984)
Most rainfall (month): 1.54 of an inch in January (Record: 18.18 inches on September 1971)
Highest wind speed: 30 mph on Jan. 30
Previous day with any rain: Feb. 12
Previous day with 1 inch or more of rain: Oct. 17, 2012
Previous day with any snow: Feb. 12
Previous day with freezing temperatures: Feb. 12
Read regular updates on Oklahoma's unpredictable weather and learn more about meteorology from the Tulsa office of the National Weather Service.

>> Visit the main weather page
>> Send us your weather photos
>> Meet the forecasters

Contributors
Staff Writer Althea Peterson started writing for the Tulsa World in March 2007 after previous stops at the Norman Transcript in 2006 and the Oklahoma Gazette in 2005. She followed her older brother from rural Wisconsin (with a public school that never seemed to call snow days) to the University of Oklahoma, but did not follow his pursuit to study meteorology. However, she tries to find as many opportunities to report on the weather as possible.

Staff Writer Jerry Wofford came to the Tulsa World in 2010 from The Manhattan Mercury in Manhattan, Kan. Originally from western Arkansas and a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, Jerry has lived in Tornado Alley his entire life and is one of those people who goes outside when the sirens go off.

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