Over For Another Six Months
This is the last day of the 2010 Hurricane season and the US managed to make it through with only one minimal Tropical Storm, Bonnie, making landfall. Other areas were not so fortunate.
Igor, which devastated Newfoundland, and Tomas, which ravaged St. Lucia are almost certain to be retired from the name list. Alex and Karl, which both made landfall in Mexico, are also candidates for retirement.
There were two Tropical Depressions and 19 named storms this year. A dozen of the named storms became hurricanes, and five of the dozen reached major hurricane status [Category 3 and above]. The Sea Surface Temperatures were well above normal, but the steering currents and fairly consistent high pressure in the Northern Gulf kept the storms away.
Dr. Masters has more information in his post, Hurricane season draws to a close.
He compares this season to 1995, when only two hurricanes made landfall in the US. The 1995 map is the background to my hurricane header, and the two hurricanes were Erin and Opal. If you look at the map, I live where both storms made landfall.
In addition to the Tropical Weather links, I’ve also pulled the Wildfire links from the sidebar, as the rains and snow have started and are reducing the danger.
5 comments
Yep. Heavy fire season is now officially over. There is STILL a ton of wildfirefood for “light” fire season…but the odds are good that we won’t be seeing fire anytime soon.
Quick. Knock on wood.
and that’s the header that’s at the top of the page even as i type this.
erin and opal, i remember them. i recognized those tracks right away, the first time ii saw that header.
They way you’re weather has been, Jill, I would think that some people would be thinning the brush to warm up.
Actually, Hipparchia, we were fortunate in a way because Erin took out a lot of the dead wood and debris that would have been really destructive in Opal’s higher winds. Opal would have been a lot worse without the lessons learned from Erin.
Yes. We have been thinning down the brush to use as kindling! 😉
(No..not kidding…) It has been downright COLD!!!!!! Down to about 32 here
in downtown Santa Barbara the other night. I remember onetime it was actually colder, back in the early 90’s…it got down to 22.
We’ve had some serious medical conditions brought on by the cold with the homeless population and one man died from the cold last night.
It would be fun, at least, if there was some snow involved, but, alas…no.
Yeah, my people down in San Diego have been complaining about the cold, so I assume that it gets worse the further North you go up the Coast. We are having our first light frost of the year, and the cats have taken to moving about in groups for warmth. I warm concrete pads for them, but they have to use them.
It is definitely hard on our homeless, because they certainly don’t have the gear for cold weather.