The other day I got to thinking that we haven't had one hurricane.  While I'm happy that the gulf coast hasn't had to board up windows (especially in this tough economy), we've got some really cool tools to use.  I won't mind if we can't do it until next year.  You may remember this blog about things being near normal for this year, but that has changed.  I'm guessing the biggest reason might be the fact that we haven't had a named storm yet.

I was going to do some research myself, until I cam across the updated forecast, which did it all for me!  There's now a 50% of a near normal season and a 40% of a below normal season.  Add to that there's a 70% chance of 7 to 11 named storms, 3 to 6 of which are expected to be hurricanes, and 1 or 2 are expected to be major hurricanes.  However, it doesn't matter how many hurricanes we see in the Atlantic, what we really care about is the number that make landfall.  That will depend on the pattern over the Atlantic when they do form. 

I looked for reasoning behind the drop off and the biggest might just be El Nino.  Unlike our bad storms (supercells, squal lines, and tornadoes) hurricanes are not fans of shear.  While I'm not sure of the exact reason why there is more shear, but there is, which is tearing disturbances apart before they can get organized into a larger storm.  That doesn't mean they'll never form, because some big storms have formed during El Nino. 

I was surprised to find that Hurricane Andrew (the first named storm of 1992) didn't form until August.  That shows that slow starts don't' mean we're completely out of the woods.  If storms do form, we'll get to bust out those new toys, but I'm hoping we can save those until next year.  However, next year might be a stretch as well given that El Nino will probably still be around.