Last night I was on the Tucker Carlson Show (Martha McCallum hosting) to discuss Hurricane Dorian in its historical context. Here’s the video of my interview:

During the segment, she sprung a new statistic on me: That there have been a record number of Cat 5 hurricanes in recent years.

It looks like this claim originated with Weather.com, with the article Hurricane Dorian Becomes the 5th Atlantic Category 5 in 4 Years. Here’s the quote:

“Hurricane Dorian intensified into a Category 5 on Sunday morning, becoming the fifth Atlantic hurricane in the past four years to reach this highest level on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale. Dorian’s intensification into a Category 5 marked the fourth year in a row the Atlantic basin has had at least one hurricane reach that strength. That’s the most consecutive years on record with at least one Category 5 in the Atlantic, topping a three-year stretch from 2003 to 2005.”

Except, it isn’t true.

There were 5 Cat5 hurricanes in 4 years in the 1930s, too:

“Bahamas” (1932), “Cuba” (1932), “Cuba-Brownsville” (1933), “Tampico” (1933), and “Labor Day” (1935).

You might wonder, did they use a different dataset than me? No, they used the very same one…and even show the 1930s hurricanes in their article!

Oops.

via Roy Spencer, PhD.

https://ift.tt/2LrSzzz

September 3, 2019 at 09:49AM