Is North Carolina in for another hurricane season like 1996?
Twenty years ago, I was fresh out of college and living in Raleigh, North Carolina. I had just started my first website, the "Carolina Storm Investigators (CASI)." It was one of the first amateur blogs covering the 1996 Atlantic Hurricane Season. It turned out to be a blockbuster season for the southeastern part of the state, with an unprecedented four tropical systems impacting the area: Tropical Storm Arthur, Hurricane Bertha (which I recently blogged about), Hurricane Fran (which I will blog about soon), and Extratropical Storm Josephine.
Today, looking at the spaghetti model output for three soon-to-be-tropical systems in the Atlantic pointing in that direction, one might wonder if the state is in for the same thing this season?
Short answer: Probably not, statistically speaking. Long answer: If you live in the Carolinas (or anywhere on the Gulf or East Coast), it's time to prepare, because this season is getting in swing (read more about the triple tropical threat in our story here).
Although the model forecasts above only go so far out in time, we can also look at where past tropical storms moved based on the weather patterns that exist today. When we do this, we can breathe a bigger sigh of relieve, as most (but not all) storms have curved out to sea:
