Hurricane Severity
I’ve noticed people remarking on how much worse the hurricanes have been lately. That’s not actually true; if you look at NOAA data, you’ll notice that the severity and number of hurricanes hitting the US peaked in the 1940s, and has declined since.
Q*: If that’s true, why is the destruction wrought by Katrina so unprecedented?
A*: We’ve been lucky in the past. The problem with Katrina was not simply its intensity, but that it happened to strike a particularly vulnerable area.