Just like Hurricane Felix, 2007's Hurricane Dean has now also been upgraded by the National Hurricane Center. I have done my latest Storm Pundit item about the new official tropical cyclone report (PDF). Interesting facts:
* Both Dean and Felix had maximum sustained winds of 150 knots, or almost 175 miles per hour (as estimated in these final reports). That means both were stronger than any other hurricane anywhere else in the world in 2007...which is odd.
* At landfall, Dean kept intensifying and there is a new estimate for the storm's minimum sea level pressure--905 millibars. That leaves Dean tied with 1969's Camille and 1998's Mitch for the seventh lowest pressure ever measured in the Atlantic region.
* As I have mentioned before, Dean and Felix were the seventh and eighth category 5 storms that have occurred in the Atlantic basin in the last five years. Scientists are starting to blame this activity at the hurricane extremes on global warming. I should have more on that soon enough.
For now, once again, you can read my item on Dean here.
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A quick question: In what year did the NHC start doing post-season reanalyses? Could it be that there are a number of earlier hurricanes that also would have merited upgrading, had that been done?
IOW, how well can we really trust data like "number of Cat 5 storms per season", if the "goalposts" keep moving?