Monday, February 11, 2008

Hurricane and cyclone seasons in 2007

Terra Daily summarizes the 2007 hurricane season here, with a few comments about the tropical cyclone season, too: The Atlantic Hurricane Season began early in 2007, and by mid-December it was still going. The season officially begins June 1 and ends Nov. 30. That means that for the most part, storms have formed and fizzled between those dates, or they used to. NASA satellites were watching and providing data from the beginning when Andrea kicked off the season on May 9 when she formed 150 miles northeast of Daytona Beach, Florida. On Dec. 10, 2007, Sub-Tropical Storm Olga formed to the east of Hispaniola.

The hurricane season produced 2 tropical depressions and 15 tropical storms, six of which became hurricanes. That's a little more than average. The storms that became hurricanes were: Dean, Felix, Humberto, Karen, Lorenzo and Noel... Of special note, there were two Category 5 hurricanes which led to a "first." It was the first time two Category 5's made landfall in one season. Both storms, Dean and Felix, made landfall in Central America....

Other parts of the world weren't quite as fortunate as the U.S. this hurricane season. In the western Pacific and Indian Ocean regions, cyclones were very active. The north Indian Ocean experienced a damaging and deadly 2007 hurricane (cyclone) season. In June, Category 5 Cyclone Gonu surged out of the Arabian Sea and struck Oman and Iran - nations that almost never experience cyclones - causing almost $4 billion in damage. In mid-November, Cyclone Sidr was spawned in the Bay of Bengal, grew to Category 5 intensity, and devastated Bangladesh. More than 4,000 died and tens of thousands of homes were leveled. Both of these Category 5 cyclones caused immense property damage and had crippling impacts in these emerging nations....

NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center, Wikimedia Commons

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