Texas Hurricane Landfalls: A Case Study for Understanding Circular Distributions and Geographic Data

The azimuth at which a hurricane makes landfall has important implications in evaluating potential impacts and effects. This paper develops an analysis of azimuths of Texas landfalling hurricanes to demonstrate the use of descriptive and inferential statistics for data with a circular distribution. Results indicate that hurricanes making landfall in northern Texas have a more westerly component to their azimuth then those striking southern Texas.