Hurricane trouble almost doubles

But whether this is due to human-induced global warming is still uncertain. “We need a longer data record of hurricane statistics, and we need to understand more about the role hurricanes play in regulating the heat balance and circulation in the atmosphere and oceans,” said report author Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Webster called the findings astonishing. In the 1970s, there was an average of 10 big hurricanes every year globally. Since 1990, we’re getting 18.

Although the total number of hurricanes (including categories one to three) has dropped globally since the 1990s, it should concern the British Isles that the only region getting more hurricanes overall is the North Atlantic, where they’ve gotten bigger, longer-lasting and more numerous since 1995.

The report appeared last month in the journal Science.

Meanwhile, as Rita was battering Texas late last month, one of the less-publicised effects of Hurricane Katrina has been the crippling of the very firms best placed to rebuild the city, according to American journal Engineering News Record. URS CORP, which has 500 staff in the New Orleans area, spent 10 days trying to locate personnel, and housed many in its Baton Rouge office. The local office won’t be open until this month.

Many coped as best they could. Fred Yoder, president of Durr Heavy Construction, had his home submerged. Last month he was living in a tent-trailer on office property, and his wife and daughters were making up to 200 sandwiches a day for displaced employees.

And although local companies may win contracts related to reconstruction, some may find themselves unable to deliver. Citywide Testing & Inspection in New Orleans, a subcontractor on the city’s sewer program, says that many of its 52 severely impacted employees have scattered across the U.S. and may not return.