No hurricanes so far this year. What’s behind this relatively quiet season?

It has been a remarkably quiet season across the Atlantic Basin. In fact, we still haven’t had a single hurricane. The last time we went through an entire season without a hurricane was over 100 years ago, all the way back in 1914! And with the typical peak of the tropical season almost behind us, that may become a reality.

This is all because of the very strong El Niño that developed this year. The pool of very warm water over the east-central Pacific waters is responsible for an increase in rising air and thunderstorm activity. The Pacific basin has actually been quite active with ten hurricanes so far, but that setup actually yields higher wind shear over the Atlantic Ocean as well as sinking air. Both are destructive for tropical development.

Despite how quiet the tropics have been, it was a very wet two-month period in our area with over a foot of rain that fell between August and September combined. That is the fourth highest on record within that time span, and two of the three years that ranked higher had tropical remnants come through our area. That was in 2004 when Ivan dumped record rain and flooding, and 2018 when Gordon dumped almost 6 inches of rain over the area.