The Atlantic hurricane season has fallen unusually silent — record silent — as a powerful El Niño disrupts storms before they can develop.
No Atlantic hurricanes have formed so far this year, and the National Hurricane Center says none are likely for at least another week, despite the fact that the season would normally be nearing its peak. Only five relatively weak, short-lived tropical storms have developed.
Saturday marked a record for the latest point in the season without a storm reaching the 64 mph (103 kph) wind threshold required to become a hurricane, at least in the satellite era, said Nick Novella, a meteorologist with the government’s Weather Prediction Center. A handful of years before the 1950s also went this late without a recorded hurricane, but experts consider those records unreliable because ocean monitoring was incomplete.
Atlantic hurricane activity is also at its lowest post-1950 level, according to Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University. A measure that accounts for the number of storms, their intensity and their duration shows activity at just 7% of normal for this point in the season.
Still, forecasters warn people not to become complacent. Even during an El Niño year, a single storm can cause catastrophic damage. Experts cited 1992 as a reminder: that season began slowly but produced the devastating Hurricane Andrew.
“It’s really staggering, just how inhospitable the Atlantic is to anything that could form a tropical cyclone right now,” said Kristen Corbosiero, an atmospheric science professor at the University at Albany. “Anything that tries to form is just getting this triple whammy” — storm-shearing winds, dry air that deprives systems of moisture and sinking air that suppresses development.
Those three conditions are classic effects of El Niño, the natural and temporary warming of parts of the equatorial Pacific Ocean that alters weather patterns around the globe, five experts told The Associated Press.
“It’s just hammering the Atlantic. It’s just impressive,” Klotzbach said. “We haven’t even had anything really even close to a hurricane.”
The strongest El Niño influence has been record-setting wind shear across the Atlantic. Wind shear occurs when powerful easterly winds blow against a developing storm near the surface while westerly winds push in the opposite direction higher in the atmosphere. That opposing flow can tear a tropical system apart, Corbosiero said.
In the region stretching from Africa toward the Caribbean — the main breeding ground for storms that typically move west — wind shear is about 45 mph (74 kph) stronger than a tropical cyclone can withstand, Corbosiero said. She described that level as unprecedented.
“Their heads are cut off before they even have a chance,” said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane expert at the University of Miami.
Wind shear has remained lower in the Gulf of Mexico, where storms typically become more active later in the season. That means the region could still see powerful storms, Corbosiero and other experts cautioned.
Along with the dry air that starves the storm, African dust is choking it, and there are fewer “seeds” of stormy weather that could develop, all classic El Niño signs, the experts said. And in the Atlantic, high pressure is pushing the air downward, which also hinders storms from forming, they said.
This is all despite warm waters — the world’s oceans have been record hot for 100 days — that normally feed storms. It shows the power of El Niño to overcome that, Klotzbach said.
The trouble is the Atlantic waters, while warm, haven’t warmed up nearly as quickly as the atmosphere above, which got hotter quickly as part of El Niño, said Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorology professor Kerry Emanuel. His research found that what matters more than just the water temperature is the difference in temperature between the air and the water; because hurricanes are powered by the flow of heat from the ocean to the air, the higher that is, the less storm activity there will be.
The waters of the Atlantic are a few months behind the atmosphere in feeling the El Niño effect. But next year, as the El Niño winds down and cools closer to normal, the warm water will persist, which will increase the odds for next season to be extra busy, Emanuel said.
Just as El Niño traditionally dampens Atlantic hurricane season, it tends to rev up tropical cyclone activity in the Pacific, with moist air and little wind shear. And so far this year, storm activity in the eastern Pacific is nearly double normal, with hurricanes lasting much longer than usual. In the central Pacific, activity is about 40% more than normal.
“It’s just a party out there, one right after the other in the eastern Pacific,” Klotzbach said.
While the Atlantic has had only five small tropical storms, there have been 16 named storms in the eastern Pacific and 20 in the central Pacific.
Hawaii has been hit twice. El Niño tends to push storms farther west than in other years, Corbosiero said.
Because scientists have long known about El Niño’s effects on storm activity in both oceans, forecasters months ago predicted a slow Atlantic hurricane season.
“I don’t think anyone really foresaw it being this quiet,” McNoldy said. “This is quite remarkable.”
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