East Coast cities that experts say are overdue for 'disastrous' storm

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Hurricane analysts say monster storm could hit at any time
Worries over how modern buildings will stand up to 110mph winds
Hundreds of thousands could die if hurricane hits Tampa, experts warn
Quiet hurricane season forecast but does not rule out a massive storm

By Kate Pickles For Mailonline

Published: 05:39 EST, 1 June 2015 | Updated: 23:23 EST, 1 June 2015

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Cities on the Gulf and East coasts are overdue a 'monster storm' which could hit at any time, experts have warned.

Meteorologists expect the likes of Tampa, Houston, Jacksonville and Daytona Beach to historically get hit with major hurricanes every 20 to 40 years.

But many have now gone between 70 and 100 years without a powerful hurricane or storm, according to data analyses by a hurricane professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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At risk: The cities on the East and Gulf coasts that experts say are 'overdue' a major storm or hurricane

Experts have warned the cities are 'ripe for disaster' with buildings that have never been tested by 110 mph winds experienced in hurricanes Katrina and Andrew.

MIT meteorology professor Kerry Emanuel said: 'We've been kind of lucky.

'In the Tampa region, an Andrew-sized storm could cause more than $200 billion in damage, according to a local government study in 2010.

'It's ripe for disaster. ... Everyone's forgotten what it's like.'

'It's just the laws of statistics,' said Emanuel. 'Luck will run out. It's just a question of when.'

With hurricane season starting today, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasts a 70 percent chance of fewer than normal hurricanes, mostly because of an El Nino weather oscillation.

But even a quiet season can have one devastating storm hit like when Andrew smashed parts of Miami in 1992, in a below average year for overall hurricane activity.

Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is preparing for the worst and worrying that other people aren't.

Inexperienced people 'generally underestimate how bad it will be and made decisions about staying when they should be evacuating,' Fugate said. 'You have to accept the fact that every time a major storm threatens it's a new experience for 99 percent of the people involved.'

And then there are the people who went through smaller storms and think that wasn't too bad and misjudge the bigger storm. In that type of situation, that thinking can 'get you killed,' Fugate said. 'People don't always understand the threat.'

Experts say East Coast cities are overdue disastrous storms

Devastation: The scenes shows the ruins of a Florida coastal community that was hit by the force of Hurricane Andrew in 1992

Hurricane evacuation researcher Jay Baker, a retired Florida State University professor, said his studies and surveys show that people will still evacuate properly even if they don't have recent storm experience.

But it's not just people; it's the officials who have to make the tough decisions and tell people what to do. Only one hurricane-prone state, Louisiana, has a governor who was in office when a major hurricane hit. The FEMA top management is different than in 2005, when the last majors hit.

Fugate, who was Florida's emergency management chief during many state landfalls in 2004 and 2005, said 'there are very, very few people who are working state government in Florida who were there in state government in 2004.'

Experts are especially worried about the Tampa region. Emanuel calculates using past storm data and computer simulations that a major hurricane in general should hit Tampa every quarter century or so.

My worry is that we'll have hundreds or even thousands dead the next major hurricane that hits the Tampa Bay area

Christopher Landsea, science operations officer at the National Hurricane Center, Miami

The National Hurricane Center, calculating on past storms a bit differently, says a major hurricane should hit every 30 years or so but it has been decades upon decades since the big one hit.

'It's a real big concern,' said Christopher Landsea, science operations officer at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. 'My worry is that we'll have hundreds or even thousands dead the next major hurricane that hits the Tampa Bay area.'

It may sound like areas like Tampa are 'overdue,' scientists like Landsea and Emanuel say that's not a good word because the odds of getting hit don't actually change because there were no storms the year before. They are the same year to year.

'Hurricanes don't give a darn what happened the last year, the last 10 years,' Landsea said. 'We could certainly have a major hurricane hit Tampa-St. Pete in 2015 but it doesn't matter for this particular season that it hasn't had a hurricane since 1921.'

For Houston the last major hurricane hit was 1941, according to the hurricane center, although smaller storms, barely under the threshold for major, have hit more recently and major storms have skirted nearby.

'I would be seriously worried about Houston, just because it's a huge petrochemical center with very large potential for a blended natural-technological event,' said Kathleen Tierney, director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado.

For Ocean City, Maryland, and down the coast at Norfolk, Virginia, it's been more than 160 years since they've been hit by a major hurricane. And while geography and currents make landfalls there rarer than Florida, it can happen and probably will someday, experts said.

'I feel like I live on the San Andreas fault,' longtime coastal Maryland resident RuthAnne Grant said inside a hardware store on Memorial Day. 'A lot of older people move up here without a clue about what's going to happen.'

Search: Rescue personnel search from victims as they traverse the New Orleans 8th ward after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005

A look back: New Orleans devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005

It has been more than nine years since the U.S. was struck by a major hurricane - Superstorm Sandy did major damage but didn't qualify meteorologically as a major hurricane. That's a streak that is so unprecedented that NASA climate scientist Timothy Hall went looking to see if it could be explained by something that has happening with the weather or climate.

He found that big storms formed, they just didn't hit America, coming close and hitting islands in the Caribbean and Mexico. The lack of hurricanes hitting the U.S. 'is a matter of luck,' Hall concluded in a peer-reviewed study.

Even though the Virginia, Maryland, Delaware area doesn't get as frequent major hurricanes as Florida or Texas, the traffic chokepoints and inexperience of people there worry Fugate, especially Norfolk.

'These are areas that haven't had a lot of hurricanes,' Fugate said. 'People tend to think, well, they don't have a hurricane problem. But it's a region that would be very difficult to evacuate.'

At a disaster conference in Ocean City, Maryland's emergency management director Clay Stamp said he does worry about 'a false sense of security' in the region because there have been several close calls with smaller storms that didn't hit in the past decade or so. But he added that watching major disasters in Sandy and Katrina from afar has helped make residents more aware of how bad it could get.

Stamp worries about tourists who look at sunny skies and don't pay attention: 'We just need the public to stay connected. When they come to the beach, the propensity is to disconnect.'

Hurricane center director Rick Knabb lives in a city, Fort Lauderdale, that hasn't been directly hit by a major hurricane since 1950, though Andrew came close.

'We should count our blessings that in any particular location, you've gone a long time without a significant impact,' Knabb said. 'It's not like hurricanes or tropical storms haven't happened anymore. They just haven't happened here or where you live.'