Sure has been a long time since my last blog post. The end of the Spring Semester and the quick turnaround to Summer Session have occupied most of my time (along with the arrival of our first granddaughter in June).
So now that Summer Session is entering its final week, I can look ahead at some upcoming vacation time and begin to think about this year's hurricane season. The National Weather Service has yet to publish its final estimate of what the 2009 hurricane season will be like (that should be out during the first few days of August). But it seems that the Atlantic may be quieter this year than in the past few. There is a strong El Nino developing along the equatorial eastern Pacific Ocean, and that is expected to continue through the upcoming winter. El Nino is an unusually warm water current that flows eastward along the equatorial Pacific towards the South American coast. When it develops (usually every 3-4 years, but unpredictably so), the Pacific becomes much warmer than normal, while the Atlantic and Caribbean remain cooler than normal. This tends to sharply decrease the number and strength of tropical storms and hurricanes that form in the Atlantic from June through October. So I expect that the forecast will call for fewer Atlantic/Caribbean storms than in the last few years.
That's certainly good news for the residents of Florida and the Gulf Coast, as they have been pounded since 2004 with one tropical system after another. In 2004, Florida experienced four major hurricanes (Charlie, Helen, Ivan and Jeanne). In 2005, they were hit with Wilma (which earlier had been the strongest hurricane in Atlantic/Caribbean history), while the Gulf states had to deal with Katrina and Rita. Last year, Gustav and Ike did their damage from New Orleans to Galveston and Houston.
Hopefully, the developing El Nino will lessen the activity in the Atlantic and give all those folks a breather, along with all those others who have vacation plans along the North and South Carolina coasts. Nothing worse than dragging all that stuff down south, then having to evacuate in the face of an approaching storm.
I guess the only thing left to wonder about is what Jim Cantore and Stephanie Abrams of The Weather Channel will do with themselves if there are no hurricanes to stand in the middle of.
