Hurricanes starting point better predictor for landfall

By focussing on the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons, risk models may overestimate the probabilities of both U.S. landfall risk and potential insured losses, new research from AIR Worldwide says.
“By only focusing on the 2004 and 2005 seasons, it is easy to forget every hurricane season is unique and actual landfall activity is a function of complex interactions between a range of environmental factors such as genesis location, sea surface temperatures and the depth of warm ocean waters, wind shear and atmospheric steering,” said Peter Dailey, director of research in atmospheric science for AIR Worldwide.
AIR researchers found that a storm’s genesis location, or starting point, greatly influences its probability of making landfall along a North American coastline.
The pattern of genesis locations, an AIR release says, changes from year to year. By comparing the pattern for a particular season to long-term climatological patterns, one can better understand why in some years the proportion of storms making landfall is high, while in other years its low.
By applying AIR’s genesis theory to analyze the landfall probabilities of hurricanes Dean and Felix, the “U.S. did not ‘dodge a bullet,'” Dailey said in a statement.
“Based on where these storms formed and how they would track under typical steering conditions, our research shows that Hurricane Dean had a low chance of making landfall as a hurricane and Felix was much more likely to strike the Mexico or Central America coastline than the U.S.”