Global warming may well be stoking the hurricane-brewing waters of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, but that was not in evidence this year.
The hurricane season that ends officially today has been the tamest in 12 years, and for the first time in three seasons not a single hurricane made landfall in the United States.
And as researchers at Colorado State University pointed out, for the first time in a generation the Atlantic Coast has been spared major land-falling hurricanes - defined as those with peak winds of at least 111 m.p.h. - for four consecutive seasons.
And that gust of wind may have been the collective sighing of Florida and Louisiana residents.
Hurricanes are the biggest consumers of U.S. disaster dollars, but this marked the second time in four years that the Federal Emergency Management Agency declared no hurricane or tropical-storm disasters.
Taxpayers and coastal residents can thank El Nino, an area of warmer-than-normal surface waters covering a continent-size region of the tropical Pacific. This one came on surprisingly strong, reaching moderate strength.
The warmer waters generate strong upper-air shearing winds from the west that can rip apart incipient tropical storms that try to form thousands of miles away in the subtropical Atlantic.
For the season, a total of nine named storms, those with winds of 39 m.p.h., formed in the Atlantic Basin, which consists of the Atlantic, Gulf and Caribbean Sea. The average is 11. Of those, three became hurricanes; the average is six.
Hurricane researchers point out that it is not unusual to have a mild season during an "active" period, such as this one. Hurricane traffic generally has been brisk since 1995, and active eras can last 25 to 40 years. Some researchers hold that a warmer earth means warmer oceans and more fuel for hurricanes.
In any event, overall this was the quietest season since 1997. Not coincidentally, that also was an El Nino year.
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