Hurricane Season is up and just as bad as 2009. No doubt GW is to be blamed (‘Global Warming’ not Bush…)
Taro
Hurricane season's been a breeze, but don't breathe easy yet
THERE HAVE BEEN NO HURRICANES, OR EVEN TROPICAL STORMS, THIS SEASON. BUT HISTORY SHOWS THAT THE MONTHS AHEAD ARE THE MOST DANGEROUS.
CMORGAN@MIAMIHERALD.COM
As hurricane seasons go, 2009 has been perfect.
Two months in -- a third of the way through -- and the tropics have spun out zero tropical storms, zero hurricanes and one piffle of a depression that melted harmlessly in the North Atlantic.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if that were a harbinger of months to come?
No such luck.
``Yes, it seems slow compared to the last couple of years, but this is nothing out of the ordinary,'' said Dennis Feltgen, spokesman for the National Hurricane Center in West Miami-Dade County.
Many a hurricane season has started slowly, only to accelerate right about now. In 2004, for instance, the first named storm didn't pop up until the last day of July.
``That was the same year that had Charlie, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne,'' Feltgen said. ``We ended up with 15 named storms.''
Think back to 1992, when the first tropical storm formed Aug. 17. In a week's time, it morphed into Hurricane Andrew and steamrolled across South Miami-Dade as the last Category 5 storm to hit the United States.
With nothing on the horizon for the next few days, this year will fall short of the typical June-July production of one to two named storms. Nothing has even come close to whipping up into tropical storm strength, said Richard Pasch, a forecaster at the hurricane center.
``The waves have been very unimpressive,'' he said.
But the tropics historically heat up in August and peak in September before slowly cooling down by season's end on Nov. 30.
In May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued its annual long-range forecast, predicting a near-normal 2009 season with nine to 14 named storms and four to seven hurricanes.
The agency will issue a revised forecast on Aug. 6 with one significant new influence to factor in: El Niño. Last week, scientists pronounced that climate condition, marked by warming waters in the tropical Pacific Ocean, officially in place and possibly growing stronger in coming months.
Gerry Bell, NOAA's lead seasonal hurricane forecaster, wouldn't say how or if El Niño might change the agency's updated outlook. But the weather pattern frequently tends to tamp down the tropics -- both storm numbers and intensity. The condition, for instance, tends to increase wind shear aloft, Bell said. ``That wind just blows developing tropical systems apart.''
But he cautioned that other conditions that have produced hectic hurricane seasons over the last decade remain unchanged, including warm ocean temperatures in the Atlantic and Caribbean and favorable wind patterns off Africa, where midseason storms often first take shape as tropical waves.
``El Niño isn't the only factor in the game,'' he said.
And even if 2009 does prove to be a welcome lull, history also shows that South Florida remains the headpin in Hurricane Alley.
There is no forecasting where storms that will invariably form will hit.
``Hurricanes strike in El Niño years,'' Bell said. ``They strike in active years. They strike in weak years.'' |
