First-Ever 5,000-Year Record of Hurricanes Compiled

Hurricane researchers have put together the longest-ever record of hurricane strikes--going back 5,000 years--in the Atlantic, and it shows that the El Niño weather pattern acts plays a critical role in ramping up and tamping down intense hurricanes.

Hurricane records extend only as far back as historical texts and modern meteorological techniques have been collecting information about them, which is to say, not very far. To extend the record past these limited sources, two geologists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, in 2003, began digging up sediment cores from the bottom of Laguna Playa Grande on the Puerto Rican Island of Vieques, which is very vulnerable to hurricane strikes.

Laguna Playa Grande is usually protected and separated from the ocean during storms, but when an intense hurricane strikes, storm surges carry sand from the ocean beach over the dunes and into the lake.

http://www.livescience.com/aol/070601_hurricane_record.html 2007 Hurricane Guide