After 2005’s triple threat of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, the experts all issued dire warnings for the 2006 hurricane season. We’re in for another bad year, they said. We’re in a cycle where storms are going to get progressively more powerful, they claimed. New Orleans could only be the beginning, they warned…..also mentioned as being under the guns of Mother Nature were Miami, New York, Virginia Beach, and Boston.
Well, it appears that, for this year at least, the experts were completely wrong.
(21 August 2006) What a difference a year makes. After the record-breaking 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, the 2006 season is now below normal.
As of yesterday (20 August) three tropical storms will have formed in the Atlantic in an “average” year, which is the same number that have formed this year so far. Because of multi-year averaging, that means that today (August 21) slightly more than three storms would have formed, making this year (statistically speaking) just below normal.
In the hurricane category, this year is decidedly below normal, with no hurricanes so far, while by this date 1.5 hurricanes have formed in the average of years 1944 though 2005.
But what about the “fact” that sea temperatures in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico were rising, meaning that tropical storms would be more powerful. Well, not so much:
Part of the reason for the slow season is that tropical western Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are running about normal, if not slightly below normal
And…..
The cooler SSTs in the Atlantic are not an isolated anomaly. In a research paper being published next month in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists will show that between 2003 and 2005, globally averaged temperatures in the upper ocean cooled rather dramatically, effectively erasing 20% of the warming that occurred over the previous 48 years.?
Well, what do you know about that.
With only 3 named storms compared to 9 on this date last year, it is nearly impossible at this late date to have a season anywhere near as busy as last season, which totaled 27 by the end of the year. The most recent prediction from the National Weather Service (see first graphic, above) is for there to be 12 to 15 named storms by December — only half of last year’s total. It now looks like that prediction might be too generous.
Does this mean killer hurricanes aren’t a threat ? Of course not. What it does mean is that global climate is far too complicated for us to completely understand at this point in time.
