The frequency and duration of U.S. hurricane droughts

As of the end of the 2014 hurricane season, the U.S. has experienced no major hurricane landfall since Hurricane Wilma in 2005, a drought that currently stands at 9 years. Here we use a stochastic tropical cyclone model to calculate the mean waiting time for multiyear landfall droughts. We estimate that the mean time to wait for a 9 year drought is 177 years. We also find that the average probability of ending the drought with a major landfall in the next year is 0.39 and is independent of the drought duration, as one would expect for a Bernoulli process.