It was calm—so calm—in the Atlantic hurricane season, meteorologists and storm-prone residents whisper as if not to the temptation of fate.
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The record-breaking inactive August is coming to a close and no storms have formed, even though it’s the height of hurricane season and all pre-season experts have warned of an above-normal season. Nearly all of the factors meteorologists look for in a busy season.
Warm ocean water for fuel? examines.
Isn’t it a lot of wind shear that decapitates storms? examines.
La Nina, the natural cooling of the central Pacific that is altering weather patterns around the world and increasing Atlantic storm activity? examines.
However, no storms formed. Surprised experts note the presence of unusually persistent dry air and some other factors. But every time they and the computer simulation think that something is fermenting, nothing comes of it.
“It was an amazing, terrible calm in the Atlantic,” said University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy, noting that the weak tropical storm dissipated on July 2 and there has been nothing since.
It would be the first time since 1941 that the Atlantic Ocean passed from July 3 to the end of August without a specific storm, said Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotsbach. Since 1950, he said, there have only been specific storms in 1997 and 1961 in August and 1961, then hyperactivity in September, including the deadly Karla.
In Lake Charles, Louisiana, one of the most weather-damaged cities in the past decade, residents have noted how calm hurricane season has been so far, said Mayor Nick Hunter, and it’s almost a “test of fate” to bring. From August 2020 to August 2021, two hurricanes – Laura and Delta – hit the city just six weeks apart, deep freezes and spring floods. Residents still wear blue tarps on their rooftops.
“I think there are a lot of knocks on wood. There are a lot of prayers,” Hunter said. “Until the season is over, I don’t think anyone will feel any sighs of relief.”
Certainly not 74-year-old Shirley Verden, who lives about 200 miles away in Bayou Point or Shane, where Hurricane Ida hit on August 29, 2021. She now lives in an FEMA trailer next to her wrecked home. The house that will be demolished down to the columns this weekend so it can be rebuilt.
There are threads of potential storm systems circulating in the Atlantic Ocean that are followed by meteorologists as well as Verden. Carefully.
“I know there’s something in there now,” she said.
The National Hurricane Center monitors three thunderstorm systems in the Atlantic and gives them all at least a 50% chance of becoming a designated tropical storm, and one of them has an 80% chance of sounding. But Klotsbach of Colorado has seen this before this year and doesn’t count on it.
Only late last week, computer forecasting models predicted the formation of three, possibly four storms, including one that will become a major hurricane with winds of more than 110 mph, Klotsbach said.
Then nothing.
Thunderstorms that could be the seeds of hurricanes have pushed Africa up strong enough for the past month and a half, “but then it experiences a lot of dry air sitting over the Atlantic,” said University of Albany atmospheric scientist Kristin Corbusero. “The dry air was the main thing that kept the storms from really setting off.”
The relative humidity is about 15% lower than normal and there is desert dust making it drier, McNoldy and Klotzbach said.
Corbosero said that dry air does two things. These thunderstorms become more powerful and get their energy as warm, moist air rises from the ocean. The ocean is warm enough, she said, but the dry air causes the water to evaporate, then cool and descend, not rise.
This dry air also helps create crosswinds about two miles up, Corbusero said, “that can do real damage to the storm trying to form.”
Matthew Rosenkrans, the chief hurricane forecast officer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said he’s seeing signs that dry air is gone and normal moisture is returning, which could mean more storms. Rosencrans also says that crosswinds at other altitudes, particularly in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, have also been a factor in dampening storm activity so far.
Other factors, the scientists said, include a patch of sinking air over the Atlantic, a poorly located high pressure system also linked to the European heat wave, and dust.
It was weird in the tropics, too, Klotzbach said, but in a different way. Prior to this year, the northern Indian Ocean had one named storm in August. He said this year there are two. In the Pacific Ocean, Supertyphoon Hinnamnor was not only the strongest storm on Earth this year, Klotzbach said, but it’s moving southwest when these storms typically move from west to east.
“There are strange things going on,” Klotsbach said.
But in the Atlantic, nothing really happens and the victims of the storms of past years don’t want to feel it.
“Wouldn’t it be cool?” Louisiana resident Thomas Halko asked if the hurricane season so far will continue. Halko lives in Jefferson Parish in southeastern Louisiana, in an area hit by Hurricane Ida last year. A house on his property was removed from its foundations and had to be demolished.
“We’ve had it through the week and we seem to be in relatively good shape for the next five days or so,” he said of the upcoming weather report.
But it’s hard to appreciate the calm when he feels a “nervous expectation of doom” at the thought of the ongoing hurricane season.
“There is a bad omen that will not really go away,” he said.
Hurricane season peaks around September 10 and runs through November 30.
“It is important that we remember the lessons of Hurricane Andrew, which devastated southern Florida and Louisiana in an otherwise calm year,” National Hurricane Center Director Jimmy Rohm said in an email. “It only takes one hurricane to make it a bad season for you, and we still have many months to spend in hurricane season.”
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