Current tropical activity from National Hurricane Center
Haven’t heard much about hurricanes and tropical weather in the Atlantic this year, have you? Well, that’s because we just got our first one.
Well, our first hurricane at least. Hurricane Humberto is just west of the Cape Verde islands near the African coast. The storm is moving nearly due north and is expected to make a sharp westerly turn Friday morning and then weaken to a tropical storm as it traverses the Atlantic.
Humberto is the second latest hurricane to form in the Atlantic since satellites have been keeping track of the ocean and its tempests. We’re already on H, so we have had eight storms (including unnamed Tropical Depression Eight), but Humberto is the first to make it to hurricane strength.
It’s Sept. 11 today, which is now officially past the peak of hurricane season, and we’ve only had one hurricane. But, the season is starting to heat up (get it? Because tropical storms build and thrive in warm water...? I’ll see myself out now…).
Tropical Storm Gabrielle just passed over Bermuda, but will most likely remain a tropical storm as it moves north and northeast, away from the United States mainland.
There is also an area of low pressure over the Yucatan Peninsula that has a 40 percent chance of becoming a tropical cyclone in the next 48 hours and a 70 percent chance in the next five days. It’s moving slowly and dumping a bunch of rain, but still scattered and unorganized. Another unorganized low pressure area 650 miles east of the Leeward Islands has only about a 10 percent chance of become a cyclone in the next five days.
Hurricane season runs from June to the end of October, so we still have a big chunk of hurricane season to go. Later in the season is typically when things start to blow up.
Here’s this bit about Humberto and late-season hurricanes from the
Miami Herald:
"In records going back to 1865, 46 hurricanes have struck mainland South Florida — with 28 of them coming after Sept. 10. That’s 61 percent, (Robert Molleda, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Miami-Dade) said. Nineteen have struck South Florida in October alone, when storm formation shifts from the African coast to the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico and steering currents tend to make South Florida more vulnerable."
Then we have Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy from last year. That storm was the most destructive of the 2012 season and the second most destructive in U.S. history, only behind Hurricane Katrina.
Hurricane season in the Pacific has not been discussed as much -- it rarely is -- but it’s been a fairly active season. There have been six hurricanes there and 12 storms total. Most of those have been fish hurricanes, not causing much of an impact on land.
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