The 2017 hurricane season really is more intense than normal

It was only 25 days ago that Hurricane Harvey made landfall.

You could be forgiven for thinking it’s been longer. After all, that was four hur- ricanes ago.

We crunched the numbers and talked to an expert, and it’s not your imagination: The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season has been unusually active.

“This season has been an overachiever by almost every index,” said Bob Henson, a meteorologist for Weather Underground, a forecasting service. “We’ve had more than a year’s worth of named storms when you look at the long-term average, and that’s being just past the midpoint of the season.”

There have been 13 named storms this year. Only four other seasons since 1995 have had that many by Sept. 18. Just two more by the end of the year would put 2017 in the top 15 since 1851, when reliable records begin.

“I would be shocked if we didn’t get at least two more,” Henson said.

Of the 13 named storms so far in 2017, seven have been hurricanes, a number matched or exceeded at this point in the season only four times since 1995. Four of the seven — Harvey, Irma, Jose and Maria — have reached Category 3 or higher, the threshold for a major hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Only five other seasons since 1995 have had that many by Sept. 18.

More named storms have developed in the first 31/2 months of the six-month hurricane season than developed in the entirety of the 1997, 1999, 2002, 2006, 2009, 2014 or 2015 seasons, according to National Hurricane Center and Weather Underground data. “We’re running at about twice the pace of a typical season,” Henson said.

August, September and October are almost always the peak of the season, and it isn’t uncommon for several storms to develop on each other’s heels, as Harvey, Irma, Jose, Katia, Lee and Maria did from Aug. 17 to Sept. 16.

What stands out is the combination of frequency and intensity. It may not be unheard-of for six storms to develop in a month, but it is very unusual for two Cate- gory 4 and two Category 5 hurricanes to do so.

It is also extremely unusual for three major hurricanes to pass through the same region in three weeks, as Irma, Jose and Maria have in the northeastern Caribbean.

The last time the northern Leeward Islands experienced two major hurricanes in the same season was 1899, and now it is looking at three in the same month. Residents of some islands barely had time to assess the wreckage of a Category 5 hurricane before another bore down on them.

A full reckoning of 2017’s place in hurricane history will not be possible until the season ends on Nov. 30, but we can say with reasonable confidence:

It will almost certainly be the most expensive season on record in the United States. That distinction cur- rently belongs to 2005, when Katrina and three other major hurricanes caused more than $143.5 billion of damage in the country. But this year, AccuWeather esti- mated that Harvey and Irma might cost a combined $290 billion: two storms producing double the economic damage of four in 2005.

It probably won’t be the most active season on record. That dubious distinction belongs, by a large margin, to 2005 and its 28 named storms. cane ominous silence nications Category governor could reported Prime matic page We messaged hear galvanized roofing said what replace,” falling international will