Forget all the headlines about the potential tropical systems that may develop in the first week of September and look at how quiet this hurricane season has been.
There has not been one tropical cyclone in the Atlantic Basin since July 3, 2022, a stretch of inactivity like this has not happened since 1941!
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As I wrote about the slow start weeks ago, this was the first August without a tropical cyclone since 1941. Hurricanes are typical during August which leads to the peak of hurricane season on Sept. 10. The last rare time August passed without a hurricane was in 2013; a year that only featured 3 hurricanes-totaling less than half the number in a typical year.
Some early years prior to 1941 happened to be absent of storms including 1929 but not having any storms, even a weak tropical depression, leading into the peak of hurricane season is remarkable.
The hibernating tropics in the heart of hurricane season go counter to the seasonal predictions of an above normal year. Those preseason forecasts favored La Niña for skewing the odds higher.
But models may have overestimated the role it plays in reducing shear across the Atlantic basin as it begins losing influence after three consecutive years of wrath.
As I've said before, forecasting the weather and climate keeps you humble! The anemic Atlantic #hurricane response may also be due to 3rd year La Nina. Very small sample size to do much with this, but dynamical models didn't see this as an issue, as they forecast a busy season.
— Philip Klotzbach (@philklotzbach) August 30, 2022
The most plausible reason for the slow start is abundant vertical wind shear which is counter to La Niña conditions.
High winds aloft have impeded tropical waves from organizing into hurricanes and even the three weak tropical cyclones that formed didn’t last longer than two days from the hostile winds and dry air so prevalent this season across the central tropical Atlantic and Caribbean.
This remarkably quiet period ended with the formation of Danielle on September 1.