The number of storms that hit the coast this year was the largest since 1916.

The number of storms that hit the coast this year was the largest since 1916.
SCRIPPS HOWARD
The 2004 Atlantic hurricane season, officially ending Tuesday, spawned several years' worth of storm devastation in little more than two months, with Florida getting clobbered four times.
On their way to the Sunshine State, the hurricanes battered the Caribbean islands of Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Grand Cayman and the Bahamas.
Remnants of those and other storms spread deadly flooding and tornadoes far into the mid-Atlantic states, setting tornado records for August and September. Remnants of one of the nastiest storms, Hurricane Ivan, even circled back down the southeastern coast, crossing Florida to briefly reform as a tropical storm that doused Louisiana and eastern Texas.
'Luck of the draw'
"I don't ever want to see us in the cross hairs like that again," said Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Coral Gables, Fla. "Fourteen tropical storms, nine of them hurricanes, six of them intense hurricanes -- believe it or not, none of that sets a season record. But the amazing thing was how many of those storms made landfall in this country. It was just the luck of the draw."
In all, nine storms made landfall or came close enough to cause damage along the U.S. coast -- a coastline that had only been visited by one hurricane, last year's Isabel, in the previous three years. That many storms haven't hit the coast since 1916.
The draw was actually guided by a high-pressure system that parked over the western North Atlantic from August into October, leaving a pack of tropical storms that formed in warm waters just north of the equator no option but to barge into the Caribbean, then follow the boundary of the pressure system north.
August lull
Aside from a week's lull in mid-August, the Hurricane Center was tracking and forecasting at least one storm constantly from July 31 through October 3.
While forecasters had feared that the rest of October might prove as awful as September -- bad hurricane months often follow one another -- weather patterns began to shift. Hurricane Karl and Tropical Storms Lisa and Nicole all stayed harmlessly out in the Atlantic, although Tropical Storm Matthew, spawned just off Texas, did cause considerable storm surge and rainfall flooding in southern Louisiana.
"Lisa, some of those later ones, are not the ones that we'll remember," said Mayfield, shuffling through reports on his desk to find details of the end of the season. "My desk still looks like a hurricane hit it," he confesses over the telephone.
'Intense' days
Colorado State University professor William Gray, a noted hurricane researcher and forecaster, measures the severity of a season in the number of "intense hurricane days" -- days when hurricanes are producing sustained winds in excess of 111 mph.
"An average season has five intense hurricane days -- this one had 23 days," Gray noted in analyzing a season he had predicted since last December would be above average. It turned out to be about twice as active as even his team's most dire predictions. "The 2004 season is tied with 1926 for the most intense hurricane days observed in a single season."
Interestingly, 1926 was also the year of the Great Miami Hurricane, which kept winds above 111 mph for more than nine days; Ivan beat that record this year by a day.
Gray has been warning Floridians for years that their state had been beating the odds over the past three decades. Only one intense hurricane, the monster Category 5 Andrew in 1992 -- hit the state between 1966 and last year, but from 1933 to 1965, 11 major hurricanes hit the state.
'Rare anomaly'
"We knew it was inevitable that this period of few major strikes would end, but there was no way of knowing that the law of averages would try to catch up to its deficit so rapidly in one year," he said. "This onslaught is a rare anomaly; however, it does not by itself represent the beginning or end of any cycle or trend of landfalling hurricanes."
Mayfield agrees. "The patterns and cycles come and go," he said. "What really matters is how well people responded to the warnings."
Damage assessments and claims are still being sorted out. But it looks likely that the tropical storms did nearly $50 billion worth of damage in the United States this year, and damage of several billion dollars more in the Caribbean. Structures built to new codes set after Andrew fared much better than older ones, however.
Hurricane Jeanne's run past Haiti was by far the deadliest, with thousands killed by mudslides and flooding, but more than 100 were lost on other islands in the region.
Deaths attributed to the storms in the United States exceeded 150, but relatively few were caused by wind and seas along the coast. Mayfield expects that most were due to inland flooding or accidents and injuries sustained in storm aftermaths.
"They're all regrettable, but I think we can reduce those after-the-fact deaths with a little more education and common sense if people heed the warnings," he said.