Atlantic Hurricane Season 2008 Wrap-up

UPDATE: New 2008 Wallpaper below! This is a look at the results* of the 2008 Hurricane Season, compared to 2004-2007, and the forecasts* issued early in the Hurricane Season by various providers:

UPDATE:Here is the end-of-year summary by NOAA's NHC; they also have a high-res track map. and an all-season satellite animation on their Press Release.

*These numbers are not perfect by any means but I don't have time for further research today. Please leave me a Comment below with any inconsistencies that you find. The graphic above is based mostly on this article which listed the different forecasts and the Colorado State site PDF - I don't have time to research the different forecast updates from each vendor, so I shot for the "right-before-season" forecast date. The "landfall" numbers were taken from research I did previously based loosely on Unisys maps. Numbers for previous years were from that research and WikiPedia.

I'll admit, we didn't do so great, just looking at these numbers. The 2008 season was much stronger than we predicted. But Joe Bastardi has a separate rating system for his forecast, which doesn't use any of the numbers above, so I'll await word from him on his final "grade." He will also argue that the numbers are different than reality, due to questionable government naming criteria (or lack thereof), and I do agree with him on that (though I also know it sounds like a tiny violin being played by a sore loser).

Here's a map of all the storms this year (compare to 2005):

| 1900x1200

The "ALT" versions don't have the legend, and instead have large names next to the storm letters at the beginning of the tracks.

Probably the most interesting thing in the stats was the number of landfalls - 13 - higher than the record season of 2005 which produced nearly twice as many named storms, though interestingly enough we did say in our May forecast that "a relatively high percentage of tropical storms are expected to make landfall." We also said that our forecast "suggests a heightened risk for the eastern U.S. coastline." While this was somewhat true (the Carolinas were hit by two storms, with a third running aground near the Maine/Canada border), we clearly missed pointing out the major Gulf season that was to occur, with 5 landfalls between Key West and the U.S./Mexico border, and more than that in the Caribbean.