End of the 2009 Hurricane Season

November 30 marks the end of Atlantic Hurricane Season which began back in June.  This has been an extremely mild season with only one (Hurricane Ida in early November) hurricane shutting down a small amount of US Gulf Coast oil and gas production for a few days.  Not a single hurricane made US landfall in 2009.

Comparing storm activity from one year to the next is a challenge.  Do you use lives lost, number of named storms, dollar damage, volume of oil and gas production shut in, or maximum intensity?

Taking a leaf from Google's attempt to analyze flu using words typed into its search engine, here are two charts which I am updating for the last time this year comparing the 2009 hurricane season to previous ones.  The first chart shows how many searches for the word "hurricane" were carried out over the past six years. The 2005 season which included Hurricane Katrina stands out.  Interestingly, the Google index registered a ZERO for the week up to November 29, 2009.  This is the first time the data showed no value.

(click chart to enlarge)

A second chart shows the same data as above, except in a cumulative form with the end of 2005 indexed to 100:

(click chart to enlarge)

The effects of seasonality on oil are described in Oil 101.