While I was in Florida for business I got to see a speech given by Jim Lushine. To be honest I didn't buy into his theory much. Yes, true, there is a pattern that shows when Florida receives above average rain in May there have not been hurricanes. His theory is based on the position of the Bermuda high.

Now...my problem with this theory...it's based on less than a hundred years of data. The Atlantic ocean has been producing hurricanes for tens of thousands of years. Some things you can use trends to predict (such as traffic on the highway will be worse during rush hour - because we have a complete history of traffic from the time the interstate was made). Other things you cannot. In the case of tropical weather you are only looking at a fraction of a percent of the history of weather to base your conclusions. If we looked at only a fraction of a percent of that recorded data..let say this year - we'd conclude that June and July are very active for tropical weather and that heavy rains in May in Florida mean a very active Gulf season. Obviously this isn't enough time to base any conclusions on. It would be like only using a weekend in 1947 to base our traffic prediction. It was a weekend - and long before traffic was a real issue.

All theories are relative to the data they are derived from. In the case of weather theory...we are only working with a tiny fraction of the true amount of weather history. To accurately predict weather using trends alone I think we'd need to look back several thousand years..not just the last century - especially given the first half of the last century was the technological dark ages.

Okay...you can flame my thoughts now.

Derek