Lucky hurricane season

Posted at 4:45 PM on October 14, 2010 by Paul Huttner
Filed under: Hurricanes

Predictions of an active Atlantic hurricane season have been in the ball park this year. The good news is the storms have steered clear of the USA.

Here are the numbers for Atlantic tropical cyclones so far in 2010:

16 named storms
9 hurricanes
5 major hurricanes

Those are some pretty respectable (and scary) numbers in a normal hurricane season. Amazingly, the USA has been spared a direct hurricane hit so far this year.

Take a look at the tracks below and you can see why. The primary steering mechanism for storms has been a large Bermuda high which curved storms around the west side of the ridge before they could reach the U.S. east coast. Other favored tracks this year have sent storms south into Mexico.

(Wikipedia Commons image courtesy Cyclonebiskit and Syntheticalconnections)

To have 5 major hurricanes in the Atlantic basin miss the USA is a lucky year.
Both the CSU (18 NS-10 Hurricanes-5 Major) and NOAA (17 NS-10 Hurricanes-5 Major) mid-season hurricane forecasts turned out pretty good this year for sheer numbers after a number of non-stellar forecast years.

Thankfully for the U.S. there has been a drought in major (Category 3 and higher) hurricanes striking the USA since 2005. The Pacific has also seen a relatively quiet season this year. More from hurricane expert Jeff Masters here.

PH

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