(College Station)—Nov. 30 marked the official end of the 2005 hurricane season, and it comes not a moment too soon for many people on the Gulf Coast.
It was the most active hurricane season in over 70 years, with 25 named storms—the most ever.
But don't put up those shutters just yet, says John Nielsen-Gammon, a Texas A&M University atmospheric sciences professor who also serves as the Texas State Climatologist.
"Even though Nov. 30 is the end of the season, there's always the chance that other storms—maybe even a hurricane—could develop," he notes. "It has happened before several times. Tropical storms don't necessarily follow the calendar."
There were so many storms in 2005 that all of the assigned names were used and storms were then named for letters of the Greek alphabet. Three hurricanes—Katrina, Rita and Wilma—developed into category 5 storms, the strongest on the scale used by weather experts.
None of the three was a category 5 when it hit land, but the damage done was indeed catastrophic. Katrina virtually wiped out New Orleans while Rita hit the Texas-Louisiana coast hard and Wilma did extensive damage in the Caribbean and Florida.
Damage totals for the 2005 hurricane season easily exceeded the $200 billion mark.
The question still lingers: Why so many intense storms in the same year?
"There's a combination of reasons, and some finger-pointing even goes to the effects of global warming," says Nielsen-Gammon.
"We still don't have definitive proof that global warming is causing all of these strong hurricanes, but the evidence is mounting that it is at least a strong contributing factor. We know for a fact that over the past decade, the water temperature of the tropical Atlantic Ocean is over 1 degree higher than it has been for decades.
Warmer water means stronger storms, and since 1995 the water temperature in many parts of the Atlantic has risen. Most of that change is natural, but global warming may have helped things along a bit."
The bad news? More intense storms for 2006 and beyond could occur.
"The forecast calls for above-average water temperatures in the tropical Atlantic for years to come," Nielsen-Gammon said. "Those higher temperatures are expected to last for a while, and it could be between 5 to 20 years down the road before those temperatures cool down."
One thing that 2005 proved is that the United States—and other countries—still are not adequately prepared for such natural disasters.
"Natural disasters are not easy to prepare for under any circumstances," he said. "We're learning about each storm as it hits and it helps us to figure out what we can do better, but each storm is unique. And there will always be a next one."