The tropical disturbance I wrote about yesterday has not sufficiently organized over night, and the National Hurricane Center has dropped its designation as Invest 94L. This system now appears unlikely to directly affect southeast Texas.
(UPDATE: Invest 94L is now back, with a new circulation found about halfway between Brownsville and the Yucatan Peninsula. It still does not appear as though this system will affect southeast Texas, but it’s worthy of continued observation. It will be interesting to see if the system flares up tonight.)
Today is something of a magical day for hurricanes and the state of Texas. Although hurricane season doesn’t end until Nov. 30, the traditional peak occurred just two weeks ago and the tropics remain exceptionally active, the odds of a hurricane striking Texas after today are now exceedingly long.
Since the 1850s, after Sept. 24, there have been just three direct landfalls by hurricanes in the state of Texas. That’s once every 50 years. Here are the three strikes, courtesy of data from NOAA’s excellent historical hurricane tracks:
A word about each of these storms. Many local residents remember Hurricane Jerry, a small storm with 85-mph winds. Hurricane Ten of the 1949 season is probably the most interesting storm, as it crossed from the Pacific basin into the Bay of Campeche, making landfall near Freeport with 135-mph winds. The 1912 storm made landfall near Corpus Christi as a Category 1 hurricane, killing 15 people.
The fourth storm on the map, from the 1867 season, was a Category 2 hurricane that never made landfall on the Texas coast, although it came quite close.
So what is happening here? The Gulf of Mexico waters at this time are still at their warmest of the year. But by the third or fourth week of September the prevailing weather patterns across the U.S. typically change. The Polar jet stream begins extending further south, allowing cold fronts to approach or enter the Gulf of Mexico. These fronts also buffer the approach of tropical systems, pushing them toward the northern Gulf coast of Florida.
I write this not to say we won’t be struck by any more hurricanes this season. But I would bet heavily against it.