Not sure where to post this...but looking at the ACE numbers again, between 1851 and 1994 there were nine years with an ACE higher than 175...and since 1995 we've had six years with an ACE higher than 175.

And if you add up all of the ACE energy beyond the top of the 'near normal' range (117), it turns out that the above-normal ACE for the past 11 years (1995-2005 inclusive) is almost exactly half of the above-normal ACE for the previous 143 years totaled (about 1200 vs 560), which is a time period 13 times longer.

neat figure, but it's like comparing apples and oranges. that's mostly an artifact of improved detection. years like 1886 and 1933 may have exceeded this one, but we didn't have satellites to find the lees and brets and epsilons. it's extremely likely that a lot of storms in the historic record have escaped detection. but anyhow, if you wish to beat dr. klotzbach's forecast. believe it's coming out tomorrow... CORRECTION, coming out tuesday, dec 6 -HF

Well sure, but there were still a lot of ships in the ocean, and not that much could have been missed, especially big storms, that would render previous ACE values useless for purposes of comparison for this large a discrepancy. The weaker tropical cyclones that were surely missed wouldn't have impacted the ACE number so much.

you'll notice that in a lot of years there are no major hurricanes, or just one.. and the tracks don't have realistic intensity trends for the stronger stroms. believe me, comparing the ntc data of 1872 and 2002 like they're the same thing is a mistake. -HF