With the month of August now in the books, it’s official that for just the second time since 1960 there have been no named hurricanes in the Atlantic.
The Canadian Hurricane Centre says there is a multitude of reasons for the lack of storms but they are attributing Saharan dust as the primary factor.
Ian Hubbard a meteorologist with the Hurricane Centre says dust and warm air from the Sahara desert builds up in the atmosphere and drifts over the Atlantic ocean. “That reduces the ability for storms to form there, smaller thunder systems struggle to become organized and form into tropical systems,” Hubbard said.
Although it has been a slow start to hurricane season which runs from June until November meteorologists expect things to pick up.
As we have reached day 90 of the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season, it has been relatively quiet so far. But there are signs that tropical cyclone activity is about to increase as the @ECCC_CHC continues to monitor several areas of potential development. pic.twitter.com/moRhOoxocp
— ECCC Canadian Hurricane Centre (@ECCC_CHC) August 29, 2022
The climatological peak of this year’s hurricane season is on September 10, and Hubbard says with the Saharan dust now subsiding they are already noticing increased signs of activity.
“It’s looking like we only just beat that August cutoff as we’re monitoring Tropical Depression #5 right now and our modeling leads us to believe it will become the first named tropical storm since July 2 later this afternoon, and it has a good chance to become a hurricane,” Hubbard said.
Fortunately, the storm is forming in the Atlantic ocean away from any large land masses and it’s trajectory shows it will likely never make landfall, dying out over the ocean.
@ECCC_CHC is keeping an eye on Tropical Storm #Danielle which formed southeast of the Canadian Response Zone. This storm is not expected to have an impact Canadian waters. 🌀https://t.co/pLdr3kJqqr pic.twitter.com/aw8aBB9rbF
— ECCC Canadian Hurricane Centre (@ECCC_CHC) September 1, 2022
Hubbard noted that the lack of named storms is not linked to climate change, citing the fact that the 2021 and 2020 seasons were both amongst the top three most active hurricane seasons on record.
Since speaking with Canadian Hurricane Centre Meteorologist Ian Hubbard this morning Tropical Depression #5 has been upgraded to Tropical Storm Danielle.
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