Hurricane Season a Bust So Far, and Forecasters Not Sure Why Lee Bowman - Scripps Howard News Service
go to original October 5, 2013

NOAA's Eye in the Sky: Watch 10 Years of Weather History in 3 Minutes - This animation shows one image from each day of the satellite's life - a total of 3,641 full disk visible images. (NOAAVisualizations)

WASHINGTON — The Atlantic hurricane season has proved to be much tamer than the "above average," "very active" range government and private forecasts predicted last spring.

All the models used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, university researchers and private weather services pointed the same way last May.

A steady supply of warm water in the tropical Atlantic (80 degrees or higher), a steady jet stream coming off Africa to deliver tropical waves that breed storms, and the lack of a Pacific El Nino that often generates winds that break up tropical storms pointed to as many as 20 systems developing in the next six months. As many as six or seven of those storms were forecast to become "major" hurricanes with top winds greater than 111 mph.

"Historically, this combination of climate factors produces an active hurricane season about 70 percent of the time,'' Gerry Bell, NOAA's lead seasonal forecaster said.

Instead, there have been 10 tropical storms, some that lasted only a few hours, and only two that reached hurricane strength. The first of those, Humberto, reached hurricane strength early on Sept. 11, just shy of the record for the latest date a storm has achieved winds greater than 74 mph. And no major storms have formed.

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