Hurricane history

Interesting chart showing the decline in hurricanes of all sorts, both weak and strong, hitting the US mainland over the last 150 years or so. Especially after Katrina, Rita and Wilma.

Hard to know what the real truth is, when both the “it’s real” and “it’s overblown” camps are so strident. I mean, the chart looks rather at odds with this:

>In July last year, Kerry Emanuel, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published research showing that the duration, maximum wind speeds and energy released in tropical storms has increased markedly in both the North Atlantic and the North Pacific oceans since the mid-1970s.

> A few months later Peter Webster from the Georgia Institute of Technology documented a rise in the incidence of category 4 and 5 storms; the 15-year period from 1975 to 1989 saw 171 severe hurricanes, but the number rose to 269 for the subsequent 15 years.

(BBC)

So which is it, then? Hotter or colder? Less bad than we think, I imagine, but worse than we hope.