Tim Doggett

It’s been nine years since the last major hurricane made landfall in the United States. With a stat like that, it’s easy to get lulled into a false impression that this is the new normal.

The winter weather of 2015 has brought many challenges to residents of the northeastern United States, including extended periods of arctic air and repeated bouts of snow that have resulted in widespread reports of property damage.

In 2014, tropical cyclone activity in the Atlantic was almost diametrically opposed to activity in the East and Central Pacific basins. Florida's record-setting hurricane "drought" stretched into its ninth year, while the East and Central Pacific basins had the second most active season since 1949.

The fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was released on November 1. It is a formal synthesis of findings from various working groups and previously published special reports—some of which have been available for more than a year.

If you haven't heard that El Niño conditions are coming soon to the equatorial East Pacific, then you've probably been on a very long holiday devoid of cable news and Internet access—and I'm jealous. For the rest of us, this has been a long, drawn out forecast, one that might soon be verified.

There is an abundance of folklore regarding factors that may (or may not) protect a location from tornado activity. They go around rather than over hills, for example, or they’re disrupted by urban structures, or attracted to mobile home parks.

We have been keeping a very close eye on Arthur, the first tropical storm of the Atlantic season this year, and will continue to do so until the threat it poses has subsided. We are not only monitoring meteorological developments—as with any such storm, the research team at AIR assembles data daily to determine whether the potential losses from the event will meet the criteria we have set for posting an ALERT. So far, Arthur hasn’t, but that could change.

Death and taxes may be certain, but preseason hurricane forecasts are quite the opposite. Last year’s preseason forecasts for above-average hurricane activity were famously wide of the mark, undone by a combination of shorter-term weather patterns over the Atlantic basin that dampened hurricane formation and activity.