(New Orleans Times-Picayune) The United States is experiencing an unprecedented drought in the number of major hurricanes, Category 3 and above, with none having crossed the nation's shoreline since Category 5 Hurricane Wilma hit south Florida in October 2005, according to a new study published Wednesday (April 29) in Geophysical Research Letters.
That's nine years of no major hurricanes packing winds of 111 mph or greater hitting somewhere along the U.S. coastline, the longest such period in the history of modern tropical cyclone records dating back to 1851, said climatologist Timothy Hall, a researcher at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and lead author of the study.
