The statistical peak of the hurricane season is Saturday. Surprisingly, this is one of the calmest hurricane seasons Louisiana has seen in a while. NOAA predicted up to 20 named storms, but there have only been five named storms.
State Climatologist Barry Keim says after two super active seasons, it’s nice to get a break.
“Fortunately so far the 2022 hurricane season has been merciful to Louisiana, we certainly needed that. Really its been merciful to the United States in general it just has not been much going on,” said Keim.
Keim says this year’s hurricane season is actually running behind a normal season.
“There are 14 named storms in an average season so far we have five. Were likely to have a sixth named storm in the next day or so. Even if the sixth storm forms were still below that long term average,” said Keim.
Below normal numbers this year stem from the Saharan air layer that blows off the African Continent, which isn’t conducive to storms. Keim says this causes the atmosphere to be more aberrant than usual.
“This is air that blows off the African Continent, this dust gets entrained with the middle and upper parts of the atmosphere and stabilizes it. When the sun rays pass through this it can’t heat those sea surface levels, but it heats the middle part of the atmosphere,” said Keim.
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