At a Glance

A new study says the United States is shielded during busy hurricane cycles.An apparent climate quirk of stronger crosswinds and cooler coastal waters lessens hurricanes as they approach the coastal U.S.

A buffer zone appears to be shielding the U.S. during busy hurricane seasons, a new study says.

The says stronger wind shear, the change in winds with height and cooler coastal waters help to weaken stronger hurricanes as they approach the coastal United States during otherwise busy hurricane seasons.

This buffer zone that appears only during busy hurricane seasons may help explain why it has been more than 11 years since a major hurricane hit the United States, reports the Associated Press.

Jim Kossin, a Federal climate scientist and the study's author, noted that Hurricane Matthew, which devastated the Caribbean before its onslaught along the U.S. East Coast in October, illustrates this "protective barrier." Matthew slammed into Haiti as a Category 4 hurricane with 145 mph winds but dwindled to a Category 1 storm with 75-mph winds when it hit South Carolina.

“It’s an incredibly lucky phenomenon,” Kossin . “It’s given us a really nice barrier and decreased our threats.”

Kossin studied hurricane data from 1947 to 2015, mapping sea surface temperatures and wind shear levels in the Atlantic to see small changes near the U.S. coast. He noted that this quirk only appears during a busy hurricane cycle.

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During the quieter hurricane period from the late 1960s to the mid-1990s, Kossin discovered that hurricanes that formed were up to six times more likely to intensify rapidly as they approached the coastal United States, with wind speeds increasing more than 15 miles an hour over a period of six hours.

"Rapid intensification near the coast poses a major risk because it is difficult to forecast and shortens public warning time," Kossin noted in the study.

"This interesting study further emphasizes there's no real strong correlation between a busy hurricane season'in terms of numbers of storms and hurricanes, and impacts on land," said weather.com meteorologist Jon Erdman. "Hurricane Andrew in 1992, one of only three known Category 5 U.S. landfalls, was a textbook case of this during an otherwise lackluster hurricane season."

He added that the study does not imply that all strong hurricanes in an active Atlantic hurricane season will weaken before landfall or even that they will weaken significantly to avoid major impacts at landfall.

"The 2004 and 2005 seasons are reminders of that," he said.

The study could not clarify how, or if, global warming and a continuing rise in ocean temperatures impact this trend.

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