Hurricanes


In the Caribbean belong to tropical temperatures in the winter hurricanes in the late summer. Their force is hardly conceivable:

Hurricane Ivan (07 September 2004) was predicted for Grenada by the US National Hurricane Centre with 115 to 125 nodes. The English warship "HMS Richmond", which was situated coincidentally very close to Grenada, measured up to 165 nodes. Additional locally small Tornadoes entered on with devastating effect…

The majority thinks:

Hurricanes always move from east to west.

That is what they normally do, but what they not always do.
As we had to discover in 1985 with hurricane Klaus and 1995 with hurricane Lenny: They can go from west to east, too.

Hurricane season ends with end of October.

That is when it normally ends, but not always.
There were a lot of November hurricanes and even some December hurricanes (1875, 1884, 1887, 1953, 1954, 1975 and 2003, this one coming from the Cape Verdes to the Eastern Caribbean crossed the tracks of yachts sailing from the Canaries to the Caribbean during the "safe" December).

Hurricanes are infrequent.

Even if there have been periods when the Eastern Caribbean has been completely hurricane-free for years:
There were 57 years between 1871 and 1991 with 9 or more hurricanes per year (17 in 1887, 14 in 1926, 21 in 1933 and 16 in 1936).

Hurricanes stay well north of Grenada and the southern East Caribbean chain.

Neither Grenada nor Trinidad are immune and were badly hit by hurricanes and tropical depressions in the past.
Only the inner harbor of Puerto la Cruz, Venezuela, has never been hit or hard brushed by a hurricane. But the Venezuelan mainland including Puerto la Cruz is an unsafe place because of heavy crime and the actual political situation....


The hurricane tracks between 1871 and 1991 with updates to the present time are covered in a compendium that is available at the

National Climatic Data Centre
151 Patten Ave. Room 120
Asheville NC, 00801-5001, USA
Fax: (828) 271-4876
Tel: (828) 271-4800
E-mail: ncdc@noaa.gov


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