http://www.businessinsider.com/deadliest-hurricanes-storm-in-american-history-2016-9/?r=AU&IR=T/#hurricane-hugo-1989-21-deaths-1

Terrible tragedies all of them.  

 

One thing can be said for modern technology, the early warnings we get and superior infrastructure has clearly saved a lot of lives.  Lets pray that Irma, the most powerful we've ever seen in the Atlantic basin, does not take any more lives.

 

Scientists say Earth's temperature has increased a full degree over the course of the last century, and that the higher temperatures allows the air to carry more moisture.  As a result, the massive 100-year, 500-year storms we are seeing will become the norm.

 

Still there are those who see no cause for concern. To borrow an approps phase, "winter is coming."

There is meteorological data pre mid 1700's. However please do share a source if you have one at hand or can reference one. Since I am not aware of it existing.  

Del, the "100-year" and "500-year" storms are terms the local "weathermen" use when speaking to the masses.  They are terms like "race" that has a technical meaning but no one one uses it that way in informal conversation.  Generally these terms are use to refer to storms that should happen very rarely.  More formally the terms refer to an 1 one in 100 chance and 1 in 500 chance of occurring in a given year.  

 

 

Thanks for the clarification. 

I was thinking about you this morning while listening to NPR this.  I know NPR is a bastion of liberalism and are all over climate change, some may call that bias... anywho, they were interviewing a scientist was was talking about models that show ocean water temperature due to climate change are creating more powerful storms. There is actually a another powerful storm right behind Irma (though current models do not predict it hitting the United States.

 

At any rate, I thought about looking up those models, but figured you would have come across them by now.  I just ran a quick query to see if I could find something to correlate ocean temperatures with the strength of hurricanes (assuming something that simple exists) but did not find anything worth posting.  I'll keep my eye out and will share anything I find.

No credible model exist. Which is why you cant find one. You also will have a hard time seeing the source data. Prove me wrong and I will change my mind. The more you look the more you will see you the Emperor's new clothes. 

 

You will start having doubts when you realise how hard it is to find unaltered data.

Again this is from the site. The Elusive Absolute Surface Air Temperature (SAT)
The GISTEMP analysis concerns only temperature anomalies, not absolute temperature. Temperature anomalies are computed relative to the base period 1951-1980. The reason to work with anomalies, rather than absolute temperature is that absolute temperature varies markedly in short distances, while monthly or annual temperature anomalies are representative of a much larger region. Indeed, we have shown (Hansen and Lebedeff, 1987) that temperature anomalies are strongly correlated out to distances of the order of 1000 km.

The scientist said "models" (plural) as if there are multiple studies.  After a cursory look I could not find one to satisfy me.  I will have to dig deeper, my friend.  Seemingly, these models should not be that hard to find.  Stay tuned...

That's what i thought in 2011,Troy. You're going to find that what i have said about the models is true.