North Atlantic Oscillation - North Atlantic Hurricanes

North Atlantic Hurricanes

By controlling the position of the Azores high, the NAO also influences the direction of general storm paths for major North Atlantic tropical cyclones: a position of the Azores high farther to the south tends to force storms into the Gulf of Mexico, whereas a northern position allows them to track up the North American Atlantic Coast.

As paleotempestological research has shown, few major hurricanes struck the Gulf coast during 3000–1400 BC and again during the most recent millennium. These quiescent intervals were separated by a hyperactive period during 1400 BC and 1000 AD, when the Gulf coast was struck frequently by catastrophic hurricanes and their landfall probabilities increased by 3–5 times.