Trouble in Paradise: Hawaii and Tropical Cyclones
Hawaii – a tropical paradise, full of sun, fun, palm trees, beauty, mountains, volcanoes and more. But wait…have you ever thought about Hawaii and tropical cyclones? Although not frequent, tropical cyclones have battered the Hawaiian Islands several times in recent memory.
Do cyclones develop ‘off-season’ in the Atlantic?
Headquarters for the U.S. National Hurricane Center
In the Atlantic, the official dates for the hurricane season are 1 June – 30 November. This certainly doesn’t mean that cyclones only exist during this time frame, yet 97% of all cyclones that have developed have occurred during those months. While we really won’t know exactly how many cyclones have developed out of season prior to 20th century technological advances, there is evidence of off-season storms in the Atlantic dating back to May of 1771, and more recently tropical storm Beryl in May of 2012. Most cyclones that develop out of season do not typically impact the U.S., but there have been more than handful that have, giving us pause to think what a fickle planet our Earth can be.
CycloneCenter Participation for March 2014
March 2014 saw the most monthly classifications since March 2013!! Also, Citizen Scientist baha23 set an all time record with 4610 classifications in a month.
We reached a milestone of 300,000+ classifications on March 10th! We’ll have a highlight of the classifier who made that classification soon.
One table that doesn’t change much is the top 10 all time classifiers. But this month, we have a new citizen scientist on that list: skl6284, who moved into 9th place. However, FrederikeLisanne could move onto the all time leaderboard with more months of 700+ classifications.
This month was very active. Calbeam had 243 classifications which would have been 4th place in January but is only 10th this month!
For March 2014, we had 15,666 classifications of 531 storms from 638 citizen scientists.
Top 10 most active citizen scientists for March 2014.
| Classifications | Scientist |
| 4610 | baha23 |
| 993 | bretarn |
| 984 | skl6284 |
| 798 | FrederikeLisanne |
| 588 | dmorsebell |
| 362 | fulikalter |
| 348 | librarianholly |
| 337 | albaminds |
| 294 | kaireky |
| 243 | Calbeam |
Most active citizen scientists each month.
| Month | Number | User |
| Sep 2012 | 658 | atomic7732 |
| Oct 2012 | 3667 | chrisotahal |
| Nov 2012 | 3276 | bretarn |
| Dec 2012 | 2747 | bretarn |
| Jan 2013 | 2555 | shocko61 |
| Feb 2013 | 1714 | shocko61 |
| Mar 2013 | 1998 | bretarn |
| Apr 2013 | 1474 | ATMS103LGB |
| May 2013 | 1451 | astroboyOW |
| Jun 2013 | 1084 | bretarn |
| Jul 2013 | 976 | Geeklette |
| Aug 2013 | 1051 | skl6284 |
| Sep 2013 | 431 | tdw1203 |
| Oct 2013 | 2733 | baha23 |
| Nov 2013 | 3737 | baha23 |
| Dec 2013 | 500 | Atms345_ssc |
| Jan 2014 | 3064 | baha23 |
| Feb 2014 | 3455 | baha23 |
| Mar 2014 | 4610 | baha23 |
Most active citizen scientists overall.
| Classifications | Scientist |
| 22,582 | bretarn |
| 18,532 | baha23 |
| 10,549 | shocko61 |
| 5006 | astroboyOW |
| 3988 | chrisotahal |
| 3933 | peterthorne |
| 3470 | cch001 |
| 3172 | tpatch |
| 2796 | skl6284 |
| 2701 | velthove |
Postscript
Why was this monthly update so late? We receive weekly deliveries of data on Sundays, so we had to wait until Monday April 7th to complete the summary for March. Thanks for your patience.
CycloneCenter @ the AMS Tropical Meteorology Conference
CycloneCenter Principal investigator Dr. Chris Hennon of UNC-A presented some recent results at the American Meteorological Society Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology going on this week in San Diego, CA.
Cyclone Center 