Yesterday, September 10th, was the peak of the Northern Hemisphere's hurricane season, I generally always run a post about that. So far this year, it has been very quiet, but I didn't realize it was this quiet until I saw this headline from Watts Up With That.
There have been no hurricanes in the Atlantic — Yet! Making 2026 the quietest since satellite tracking began in 1966
Sure enough, I went to the National Hurricane Center (one of my everyday visits) and found this map.
Pretty much since last spring, the weather sites have been saying this year's El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle was looking to be a very strong or even "Super" El Nino. As soon as I heard that, my memory fired on the other years we've had that were the El Nino side of the El Nino/La Nina cycle. In El Nino seasons, the north Atlantic storms tend to either be weaker or they stay away from Florida. Many re-curve out to the North Atlantic farther east than during La Nina years, even east of the Bahamas. I was looking forward to it. The fear mongering about how bad a Super El Nino is just seemed like the regular "if it bleeds it leads" Golden Law of the TV news.
You may have heard that Hawaii is having a busier hurricane season than usual.
There are currently THREE hurricanes in the Pacific Ocean: Lowell, Karina, and Marie. The warming El Niño trend in the Pacific is increasing storm activity there while the Atlantic remains calm.
That's the other side of the story. They're not having a La Nina out there - that name applies to both the tropical Atlantic and Pacific waters. We're having very unusual conditions here, and I assume they're having very unusual conditions there. It's just that we're having better conditions, while they're having worse.
The number of storms per 100 years - plot from 2024. As you can see, September 10th is the peak but the curve is a bit higher on the "later than" (right) side than earlier. Our lack of storms so far this year isn't an excuse for all my fellow Floridians to not keep an eye out for things that could develop. Hurricane season lasts until the end of November ("close enough" to Dec 1 on this graph) and what has happened so far this year has little to nothing to do with what's coming in the second half of the season. We have had storms in November before.
To borrow someone's quote and beat it about the head and shoulders, "the season's not over until it's over." Keep your eyes open and enjoy the quiet times we're having.
We have been again "blessed" with dust out of Africa, which is a primary reason hurricanes do not form.
ReplyDeleteI think that the African dust is common, more common than the El Nino year, but that the El Nino might make the amount of desert dust bigger. So part of the bigger picture that's going on.
Delete"Hottest year ever." Again. It's always the hottest year ever, no matter what the thermometers read. It's always the worst weather ever, no matter what's actually happening.
ReplyDeleteThe lack of Atlantic storms is obviously due to climate change, right? ...right???
ReplyDeleteEverything is due to climate change. There's nothing it can't do. And McChuck's summary that it's always the hottest year ever is another example. Once they started editing the temperature records to get around some annoying truths they don't like, all the checking went away.
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