William Gray Hurricane Quotations

We feel the 1999 season will be comparable to the one just past and not too much weaker than the 1995 and 1996 seasons, both of which were very busy. Climatic evidence strongly suggests that we are embarking on a new era of enhanced major hurricane activity.

No credible evidence is available or likely will be available soon that will directly associate global surface temperature change to changes in global hurricane frequency and intensity.

Based on research data obtained through July, we foresee one of the most active hurricane seasons on record.

Regardless of whether a major hurricane makes landfall this year, it is inevitable that we will see hurricane-spawned destruction in coming years on a scale many, many times greater than we have in the past.

We expect that by the time the 2005 hurricane season is over, we will witness seasonal tropical cyclone activity at near-record levels.

Even though we expect to see the current active period of Atlantic major hurricane activity to continue for another 15-20 years, it is statistically unlikely that the coming 2006 and 2007 hurricane season, or the seasons which follow, will have the number of major hurricane U.S. landfall events as we have seen in 2004-2005.

Even though the U.S. has experienced six major hurricane strikes since August 2004, in terms of the number of U.S. major hurricane strikes during the last 11 years (nine of 43, versus one of three for the century-long average) we have been, from this perspective, somewhat fortunate,

These numbers aren't extreme, but they continue the trend in which hurricane activity appears to be on a multi-decadal upswing.

Climatic evidence strongly suggests that we are embarking on a new era of enhanced major hurricane activity.

The last major storm to come through Florida, before Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992, was Hurricane Betsy in 1965, which went through the Keys.