August isn't
always a good indicator of how September will unfold. (Image:
Shutterstock)
(Bloomberg) – Where are all the big Atlantic storms?
A year ago, Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas, kicking off a parade of destructive storms that made 2017 the costliest Atlantic season ever. So far in 2018, the region has been oddly still, with five named storms that failed to deliver any kind of impressive weather. At the moment there's barely even a crack of thunder over the ocean, though forecasters are starting to watch a newly formed African wave.
The quiet conditions can be traced back to a ribbon of warm, dry air blowing off the Sahara Desert that has wrung moisture out of the atmosphere above the Atlantic. At the same time, hurricanes depend on warm water and large parts of the ocean have been unusually cool. The result has been day after day of clear skies and unimpressed meteorologists.
“It has been dead, dead, dead,'' said Phil Klotzbach, lead author of the Colorado State University seasonal hurricane forecast. “We've had a lot of subtropical junk.''
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