Hot Air

Abstract

One summer day not long ago the Newport News (Virginia) Daily Press published an article about a weather forecaster who was predicting a major hurricane for the Hampton Roads, Virginia, area during the third week of September. The forecaster, according to the newspaper, had based his warning on the premise that the sunspot cycle was exactly right at that particular time to create conditions which would ensure that that particular stretch of the east coast would experience its worst hurricane since 1933. Years before, this same forecaster had predicted a severe hurricane season based on something he called the “banana blow-down index.”