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Hurricane season winding down?

Nadine lives on, but tropics mighty quiet.

is Day 15 in the existence of Tropical Storm Nadine, which continues to scare fish in the far eastern Atlantic.

Nadine has been a model of persistence, but it's not even close to being a record-setter.

Dennis Feltgen at the National Hurricane Center informs that the endurance record is held by the so-called San Ciriaco hurricane, which survived from Aug. 4 to Sept. 3 in 1899.

Since Nadine is named storm No. 14, the 2012 season will enter the books as an active season when it ends officially on Nov. 30.

But its best days may be behind it, according to Todd Crawford, meteorologist at WSI Corp., in Massachusetts.

Even though the season isn't far from its climatological peak, the tropical-storm traffic has dropped off the radar.

Models aren't showing anything popping, Crawford said, and that could be a symptom of El Nino, the warming of the surface waters in the tropical Pacific.

El Nino tends to activate the subtropical jet stream, and those strong upper-air winds from the west tend to snuff out potential hurricanes.

Crawford said he is expecting no more than three named storms, with winds of 39 m.p.h. or better, the rest of the way, with one of those gaining hurricane status, meaning with peak winds of at least 74 m.p.h.