Today is the statistical peak of the hurricane season, and the National Hurricane Center is not expecting a storm to form over the next week. LSU Health Climatologist Barry Keim says there have been six named storms and just one hurricane.
“The Gulf, in particular, has been extraordinarily quiet. Not complaining, but don’t anticipate it being like that for the rest of the year. So just hang on. We still got half a hurricane season to go, but hopefully it’ll remain as quiet, but just don’t count on it,” Keim said.
Keim says Bermuda High Pressure has kept storms away from the United States.
“When it’s sort of big and burly and ridged to the west, it tends to push the storms more westward into the Gulf of Mexico. But this year, the storms have mostly been going up the east coast,” Keim explained.
Keim says today only represents the halfway point of the season, and there’s still time for a destructive storm to hit the Gulf Coast.
“We had a hurricane in 1915, which made landfall in September the 29th. More recently, we had Rita, which followed Katrina, which made landfall on September the 24th, and then we have Juan, Delta, Zeta as October storms,” Keim said.
NOAA predicted 13 to 19 named storms this year. But Keim says we are on pace for just a normal season, which would be 14 named storms. He says it’s unusual to have just one hurricane so far.
Comments