Thats a hard fact which is relevant to the story

From Into the Raging Sea by Rachel Slade. Page 352.

Oh, I forgot. She had to get her licks in on climate change as well. Even though she gets her facts wrong on that as well.

The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season generated the highest total accumulated cyclone energy ever recorded. Multiple Category 5 storms tore up the Caribbean islands and coastal US. In September and October of that year, historic downpours in Houston and Florida (Hurricane Harvey), unfettered destruction in the Virgin Islands (Hurricane Irma), and total devastation in Puerto Rico (Hurricane Maria) left millions of people without electricity, potable water, homes, and access to medical care.

During that single season, hurricanes caused more than $188 billion in damages and took dozens of lives.

That money could have been spent building renewable energy infrastructure for our children.

What does any of this have to do with El Faro? Nothing. We have had a remarkable stretch of low activity hurricane seasons and 2017 was an uptick from that surprising intercession of low activity. It has nothing to do with AGW and everything to do with decadal cycles of solar, current, el nino, etc. And why on earth is there that last line non-sequitur in there? It is all partisan/ideological mumbo jumbo.

But she knows how to write if she had any sort of self-control. She could, and should have dropped all that hogwash and led with her next paragraph.

Hurricane Joaquin was the strongest October hurricane to hit the Bahamas since 1866, and the strongest Atlantic hurricane of nontropical origin in the satellite era. Its recorded wind speeds hit 155 miles per hour. Its lowest pressure was 931 millibars, close to a record.

Thats a hard fact which is relevant to the story.