If this study starts with storms in the 1950s, it should account for some important facts:
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The first hurricane given a masculine name was Bob in 1979. There were 28 years of storms with only feminine names.
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Ever since Dan Rather superimposed a map of the coast on a weather radar screen to encourage people to evacuate Galveston as Carla approached back in 1961, people have been taking hurricane warnings more seriously.
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Building codes have changed so that new and remodeled buildings are better able to weather hurricanes and keep any occupants safer.
More modern hurricanes are just much less likely to be killers because we have better building codes, better forecasting and people take hunker down and evacuation orders more seriously. More modern hurricanes are also much more likely to have masculine names. I really don’t think the reason Katrina was so deadly had anything to do with the name “Katrina”. It had more to do with a guy named “George”.
