Talk:List of United States hurricanes

Proposed renaming
Hi. Please share your views on possible renaming of this article and its sub-articles here. Thanks. Rehman(+) 02:35, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
 * archive link for anyone curious about excavating this discussion Colin M (talk) 19:41, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Criteria
The source being used for this list does not include Alabama as a victim of Georges, despite the fact that the neighbors on either side are included. The only death in the U.S. from this hurricane occurred in Alabama, and there was signficant damage. In fact, in the storms in the last 35 years, this hurricane probably makes Alabama's top 5. Whatever the criteria for deciding what hurricanes affected what states are, I think this needs to be re-examined. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.17.114.142 (talk) 01:29, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The criteria is simple: it needs to produce hurricane-force winds over that state while a tropical cyclone (either directly measured or analyzed by data). In the case of Georges, no part of Alabama had winds over tropical storm force. Florida is included because it hit the Keys - not the Panhandle - as a Category 2. CrazyC83 (talk) 23:57, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

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Missing US territories
The article is titled "List of United States hurricanes", but the United States of America consists of more than just the 50 states: it includes Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. I suggest that this article either be renamed, or be improved to also include hurricanes that have affected US territories. Minilek 02:57am, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I know this is an extremely late reply, but I agree that this issue must be addressed. (talk) 16:21, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * and I agree. The biggest problem with this is that since each of those territories is an island, and the distance that hurricane-force winds extend outward can vary substantially depending on the storm, it will be difficult to find out which systems actually produced hurricane-force winds on any particular island(s). I suggest that we use https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/news/historical-hurricanes/ to add these storms. There is an option on the map to filter the results for which storms hit the islands. I'm thinking that we should limit to ≥Category 1 systems that pass within a 50 mile radius of each island. We would also have to change the article title to List of United States tropical cyclones since typhoons affect Guam and the NMI and cyclones affect American Samoa. What do you think? Undescribed (talk) 23:26, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

I don’t think the title has to be changed. The naming discrepancy for Guam/NMI and American Samoa can be mentioned in the lead. The trickier part will be documenting each storm for the territories. Are we including Palmyra Atoll? Johnston Atoll? Or just the main territories? When I made this article, it was intended for the 50+DC. I’m not opposed to adding PR, GUAM/NMI, or AS, I just want to make sure we add them while keeping the article at WP:featured list standards. Hurricanehink mobile (talk) 01:25, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
 * That's a good point, the title doesn't necessarily need to change, especially since the vast majority of storms listed in the article are hurricanes. I also thought about adding in all U.S. territories, including those that are unincorporated/unorganized, but that is where things start getting tricky, because we would have to include: American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, United States Virgin Islands, Bajo Nuevo Bank (administered by Colombia), Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Atoll, Navassa Island (disputed with Haiti), Palmyra Atoll, Serranilla Bank (administered by Colombia), and Wake Island. Although, some of these island may have few, if any hurricane strikes. Based on a quick search that I did, Puerto Rico, USVI, Guam, and NMI are going to be the most difficult, with at least 20 systems of ≥Category 1 strength. Personally I think that it would be a bit excessive to include all of these. Undescribed (talk) 16:23, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
 * If we limit it to populated territories (which is reasonable), then we’re down to the main 5 - Puerto Rico, VI, Guam, NMI, and AS, which is doable, but sourcing could be tricky. Even if we limit it to storms passing within 50 miles, there’s no guarantee that a storm produced hurricane force winds in the territory. Hurricanehink mobile (talk) 17:53, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I've started with Puerto Rico and USVI hurricanes and went back to 1979, when sourcing starts to get a bit dicey. I've hit a few stumbles already. Hurricane Irene intensified into a hurricane over Puerto Rico, but there are no hurricane-force winds in the territory, as far as I can tell. Also, Hurricane Marilyn likely produced hurricane force winds on Vieques, so anyone researching Puerto Rico needs to be aware of its tiny islands (just like our earlier discussion covered random U.S. territories you may not have heard of). Last, it appears Hurricane David produced hurricane-force winds in Puerto Rico, but I need a better ref than this for a featured list. There is a document of historic Puerto Rico hurricanes, so if anyone can work on this (or I will later), we just need to get back to the 1960s, then citing will be easier. Also, considering how many important storms that aren't in this article, I propose a new article be created: List of United States tropical storms. ♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 20:26, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree that we should definitely stick with the five most populated US territories. For instances such as the one where Irene became a hurricane over PR, I would think that it would be a given that it produced hurricane-force winds at some location on the island, even if it wasn't officially recorded by any instruments. The same goes for any system that actually made landfall on any particular islands; for these storms as long as we can provide a source confirming a landfall, that should be enough. As for instances such as the one you mentioned with PR and Vieques, we could always just add a note specifying that hurricane-force winds were confined exclusively to that area.
 * The one part of your statement that confuses me is where you mentioned that we should create an entirely new article called List of United States tropical storms. Wouldn't it be kind of redundant to this present article? I did suggest changing this article title to a similar one List of United States tropical cyclones. Even if we created a new article on exclusively tropical storm-strength systems affecting the United States and its five territories, I can imagine that that would be an exceptionally long list, far longer than this one. Undescribed (talk) 02:44, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes it would be a long list, but it would be a useful one, having storms like Tropical Storm Allison, Lee 11, etc in the same list. I also wonder if this list should include damage or deaths, but that’s probably for a different discussion. As for assuming hurricane force winds in the event of a landfall, don’t be so sure. could explain better than me, but Irene could have produced Hurricane force winds over water, even though its center was over land. Hurricanehink mobile (talk) 13:09, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
 * We certainly could add damage or deaths, however, the way that the column template is set up in this article would definitely make it complicated; its certainly doable though. The part about Irene only producing hurricane-force winds over water seems pretty complicated. Do we have to prove for every single storm on this list that each one produced hurricane-force winds specifically over land? It seems to be an almost impossible task, especially for storms affecting U.S. territories, which are not included in the NHC's 1851-2012 list. Undescribed (talk) 20:41, 24 August 2018 (UTC)
 * As you can see, I have added what seems to be all or most of the ≥Category 1 systems for AS, Guam, and the NMI, dating back to 1960. I also found a source coming directly from the NHC, saying that David may have produced hurricane-force winds on Puerto Rico, if that helps.--Undescribed (talk) 04:25, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Great work! This is already more than we have anywhere else on Wikipedia for Puerto Rico, USVI, Guam/NMI, and American Samoa storms. Adding damage/disaster for each state would be very useful, but a lot for sourcing. Long term goal, perhaps. I also think we should have the storms in one singular column. Easier to navigate/sort. That was perhaps a bad idea when I first made this article. ♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 18:33, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

All known hurricanes that have struck US territories have now been incorporated into the main article. Undescribed (talk) 05:25, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Awesome work! Wikipedia is much better off with your edits. Hurricanehink mobile (talk) 13:44, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Because of that the chart contains data that is comparing apples to oranges. The historical record regarding island hurricane strikes pre-1950, before the current tracking and naming of storms is not at the same standard as the record of the US mainland.

Regarding the Northern Marianas Islands (relevant now thanks to Yutu), they have been administered by the US since 1947, but de facto since the US took them over from Japan in 1944. I'd hate to ask you to do more work, but in the interest of comprehensiveness, it would be nice if CNMI could be extended back to 1947 (or 1944). ♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 14:52, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Impact
A few notes about this section in the main article:

A count of 22 ("out of the 30 costliest Atlantic hurricanes") is in disagreement with the reference. I do not believe any similar count is stated explicitly in the reference but it is simple enough to count the small numbers involved in the tables now referenced in the article.

There are multiple issues with the Journalist's Resource reference (link to reference). It is secondary to a primary (link to primary source) given in the secondary itself. The secondary makes statements that are very different than the statements in the primary and it severely cherry picks.
 * The secondary states that "No other 20-year period has more than 3 top 30 storms" when the primary states "No other 2-year period has ...".
 * The secondary states that "the preceding periods of 1976-1985 and 1986-1995 were 'anomalously benign,'" while the primary states "how anomalously benign the 1970s and 1980s were in comparison to the rest of the record". The secondary gives the impression of a forward going downward trend, while the primary clearly says "in comparison to the rest of the record" comparing forward and backward. The secondary says "1976-1985 and 1986-1995" instead of "1970s and 1980s" apparently to support their added phrase "the preceding periods", which is, honestly, rather strange and, actually, unnecessary, apparently to also add to the impression of a foward going downward trend. The entry does end with "since 1900" which gives some context, but if context was the desired effect why not make the entire entry accurate, with the clearer context given in the primary.
 * The secondary says "The decade 1996–2005 has the second most damage" leaving out the remainder of the sentence in the primary, which is "among the past 11 decades, with only the decade 1926–1935 surpassing its costs."
 * The secondary states "Adjusted for inflation, population, and wealth, hurricane-related damages steadily increased from 1900 to 2005." The primary states "The two normalized data sets reported here show no trends". Not only does the data not show the trend stated, the secondary itself flat out states that it does not.

There is a more recent study that is very similar to the primary one mentioned above, and has one contributor in common with it, Roger Pielke Jr. (link to 1900 to 2017 study). I do not have the time right now, nor may I for a while, to add content to the Wikipedia article based on the more recent study. Anybody is welcome to try to make an objective contribution using it.

Jay Jor (talk) 18:58, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

The hurricanes should all be listed in a single sortable table
The separate tables for states should be merged into a single table sortable by state name, category, date, dollar amount of damage, amount of federal emergency spending, etc. Please discuss.CountMacula (talk) 21:19, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * That is a fair idea, but I had other thoughts about each individual state. I have been considering what this article should look like (since working on Draft:Tropical cyclone effects by region). I think we should have a summary for each state. It's nice having the table for each state, but I think we should also include the costliest/deadliest/strongest storm in each state. We should also go beyond just hurricane status, and mention the most significant TC effects for each state. Some could be combined, like Washington and Oregon both having their highest rainfall from Ignacio 97, Olivia 82 being the wettest in Idaho and Utah, Javier 04 being the wettest in ND and WY, Lester 92 being the wettest in CO, SD, and MN. Other states with more substantial impacts (like Ike 08 in Ohio) will get more of a mention. IDK if we should mention every state, or go by region. This article covers the coastal states really well (and wherever there were actual hurricanes), but a longtime concern of mine has been the non-hurricanes in the US. Georgia should mention Alberto 94 being the wettest storm, even though it was only a TS. Just some thoughts. ♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 03:12, 19 October 2020 (UTC)