North Atlantic Oscillation - North Atlantic Hurricanes

North Atlantic Hurricanes

See also: Pre-1600 Atlantic hurricane seasons

By controlling the position of the Azores high, the NAO also influences the direction of general storm paths for major North Atlantic tropical cyclones: a position of the Azores high farther to the south tends to force storms into the Gulf of Mexico, whereas a northern position allows them to track up the North American Atlantic Coast.

As paleotempestological research has shown, few major hurricanes struck the Gulf coast during 3000–1400 BC and again during the most recent millennium. These quiescent intervals were separated by a hyperactive period during 1400 BC and 1000 AD, when the Gulf coast was struck frequently by catastrophic hurricanes and their landfall probabilities increased by 3–5 times.

Read more about this topic:  North Atlantic Oscillation

Famous quotes containing the words north and/or atlantic:

    —Here, the flag snaps in the glare and silence
    Of the unbroken ice. I stand here,
    The dogs bark, my beard is black, and I stare
    At the North Pole. . .
    And now what? Why, go back.

    Turn as I please, my step is to the south.
    Randall Jarrell (1914–1965)

    Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
    Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)