The 1983 Pacific hurricane season officially started June 1, 1983, and lasted until November 30, 1983. These dates conventionally delimit the period of each year when most tropical cyclones form in the northeastern Pacific Ocean.
This season, there were a record-setting 21 named storms this year. Of those storms, twelve became hurricanes. Eight hurricanes reached Category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. No named storms formed in the central Pacific; however, there were two tropical depressions. A strong El Niño contributed to this level of activity. That same El Niño influenced a very quiet season in the Atlantic.
The most notable storms were Hurricane Tico, Tropical Storm Octave, and Hurricane Winnie. Hurricane Tico left thousands homeless in Mazatlán; Tropical Storm Octave killed several people in one of Arizona's worst disasters; and Hurricane Winnie was a rare December cyclone.
Read more about 1983 Pacific Hurricane Season: 1983 Storm Names
Famous quotes containing the words pacific, hurricane and/or season:
“We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with us, ready at any moment to burst into flame, the smoldering and sinister traits of character by means of which they lived through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves unharmed.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Staid middle age loves the hurricane passions of opera.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Much poetry seems to be aware of its situation in time and of its relation to the metronome, the clock, and the calendar. ... The season or month is there to be felt; the day is there to be seized. Poems beginning “When” are much more numerous than those beginning “Where” of “If.” As the meter is running, the recurrent message tapped out by the passing of measured time is mortality.”
—William Harmon (b. 1938)