CrazyC83 wrote:cycloneye wrote:CrazyC83, I saw at Weatherunderground some people talking about about counting ACE for Subtropical systems in the future. I dont favor that.
That would actually be better IMO, since a lot of pre-satellite era storms are listed as tropical storms in HURDAT when they were likely subtropical in nature. However, they only classify them as tropical because they have no satellites to prove the structure. The earliest subtropical cyclones in HURDAT are from the mid-1960s.
If Sandy had made landfall before the satellite era (and the death toll would surely be deep in the thousands in that case), it would likely have been considered a hurricane at landfall with no satellites to show its interaction with the front.
It will be interesting to see if someone from NOAA speaks about this theme to see what is their take.