Although the hurricane season in the United States officially began several weeks ago, surprisingly it has been extremely calm and even in all of August there have been no significant hurricanes.
Despite that at the beginning of the hurricane season there were 3 storms, there has not been any other named since July 3.
This phenomenon had not been seen since 1997, a year in which there was also no named storm that formed in the Atlantic during the month of August, and the same thing also happened in 1961. In 1997 there were only 7 named storms and none were very significant. While in 1961 September and October were very active.
However, there is nothing to be confident about, because although the start of the hurricane season has been calm, it does not mean that it will remain so until the end .
2 reasons why there have been no hurricanes this August
Climate experts have indicated that the situation could begin to change as of next week as the swell in the Atlantic is increasing and there could be greater activity in the tropics in the coming days as well.
DR. Philip Klotzbach, a meteorology expert, in an interview for CNN has explained the reasons why in this 2022, the hurricane season has been somewhat inactive in the eighth month of the year.
The first is due to the dry air coming from Africa.
“This dry air suppresses storm activity, which is necessary for storm complexes leaving Africa to thrive and become hurricanes. Dry air is quite common in the tropical Atlantic at this point in the season,” Klotzbach explained.
Many times, outbreaks of dry air are associated with Saharan dust that you hear a lot about in this time of year. Dry air carries dust across the Atlantic and can reach the US
“Usually by the time we get to mid-August, heavy dust bursts (and associated dry air) tend to abate, and the tropical Atlantic becomes more conducive to the formation of hurricanes“, added Klotzbach.
The second point of why we believe that it has been an atypical hurricane season is because the concept of “normal” has changed considerably in recent years.
2020 and 2021 were years with seasons of highly active hurricanes; in the first there were about 30 named storms while last year, all assigned names were exhausted, thus marking itself as the sixth consecutive “above normal” hurricane season.
That is why it is not strange that some begin to wonder why something similar has not happened in this 2022.
Klotzbach explained that while El Niño and La Niña weather events are big seasonal drivers of how the season should unfold, there are other events that drive shorter-term variability.
“The first Atlantic hurricane is formed, on average, by 11 in August and historically, the 90% of major hurricanes form after 20 August”, stated Klotzbach.
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