2010 Hurricane Season, Not Much Landfall, But Still Active

Reuters is reporting today that even though there have been a lot of hurricanes in the Atlantic this season, the lack of any major landfalls will make most people consider it a quiet year.

Before the season began on June 1st, many hurricane forecasters had predicted a high likelihood that a major hurricane would make landfall on somewhere along the east coast of the United States, but this has not happened, and with less than a month left in the season, and the most active part winding down, the chance of any major impact on the mainland of the United States or any of its “energy interests” in the Gulf of Mexico are even less probable.

Bill Read, director of the U.S. National Hurricane Center told Reuters, “If you just use (U.S.) landfall as a criteria and did not pay attention to the numbers, you’d think this was a really quiet year.” He continued, “A couple of relatively minor impacts and some flooding and that’s what we’d have to show for it.”

Read also said that this year would still be classified as yet another exceptionally busy season, it’s just that the U.S. lucked out.

The closest the U.S. had to a major landfall was Hurricane Earl, the Category 4 storm that hovered about 100 miles off of North Carolina and southern New England in September, Read said, adding, “That’s a relatively narrow escape if you look at it from the global perspective.” He also reminds us that there were a significant number of flood and mudslide deaths in Mexico and Central America due to hurricanes.

In an average season, there are about ten named storms, of which six become hurricanes. This year, there have been fifteen named storms so far, including Otto, which began forming as a subtropical storm over the Western Atlantic yesterday. Otto poses no immediate threat to land.