Well I think that you answered your own question...what is causing the increase is that we are in an active cycle.

There are many, many years since 1887 when a very large number of storms occured, and a very large active cycle in mid-century. Also since we did not have satellites or reliable ways of identifying fish spinners in the early part of the century, then don't compare apples and oranges in your numbers (if you're going to count storms that don't hit land, remember that the numbers from the earlier years will be missing storms that were not documented).

Now if you are seriously going to do an analysis, then don't make statements that are not verified by statistics, such as "to my untrained eye we are getting more stronger (sic) storms." If you do an analysis of all the data, you'll find that is not the case; there are many records of major hurricanes in previous years. Collective memory is short and fairly unreliable; just because the last two seasons have been busy doesn't mean that they represent a divergent statistic.

There is one thing that has changed dramatically and it is not hurricanes. It is the number of people who live on coastlines, and remember that this includes the northeast (strong hurricanes have hit there; if one hits there again this season or next, again, it will not be anything new).

--want to move these two posts to the other forum where I started a thread on this topic?--