The MEI and a Scarcity of Landfalling Major Hurricanes

[donsutherland1]

The recent scarcity of landfalling major hurricanes, particularly since 1996, arose at another message board. It should be noted that the majority of years in question have featured an MEI between -0.500 and +0.500. Such a situation often sees the lowest frequency for landfalling major hurricanes.

The following statistics are available for the 1950-2003 period:

MEI.......................... MH/Year...LMH/Year
0.500 or above:...........1.6..........1.0
-0.499 to +0.499:........3.0..........0.3
-0.500 or below:..........3.1..........0.4

Decade.....Moderate................ LMH
.................MEI
1950s.........40%.......................10
1960s.........50%........................6
1970s.........10%........................4
1980s.........40%........................5
1990s.........40%........................5
2000s.........75%........................0

1996-03......70%........................1

Notes:
- MEI=May-November MEI Average
- MH=Major Hurricanes
- LMH=Landfalling Major Hurricanes
- Moderate MEI=MEI of -0.499 to +0.499

[NC George]

I'm trying hard to make sense of this but it's not happening?

#1: What is the MEI?

#2: How did you determine "moderate MEI"

#3: a 40% moderate MEI (which I have no idea what it means) has 5, 5, or 10 LMH; but 10% MEI also had 4 LMH in a decade. In fact there seems to be no correelation between "average MEI" and LMH, except when over 70% the LMH went down dramatically.

#4 there is no significant difference between the set (-0.5 and down MEI) and the set (-0.5 to +0.5 MEI) the difference is only 0.1 MH and 0.1 LHM. That means over 10 years, there would be one extra MH and LHM if the MEI was under -0.5 as opposed to being between -0.5 and 0.5. If I were making a prediction (or point) based on this there would be two sets: Over 0.5 MEI and Under 0.5 MEI.

#5: Since you mention that these hasn't been a LMH since 1995, and the decade of the 90's has a average MEI: 40%; it still managed to even out with all the other decades that had a similar average MEI. So perhaps tabulating this data by decade isn't the appropriate way to divide the data.

[The Dark Knight]

Same here.........