The End to a Turbulent Storm Season
November 30th marks the official end of the 2005 Hurricane season, which was by all accounts, a record setter. In case you didn’t notice (and I don’t blame you), the 26th named storm of the season, Epsilon, formed today, and is now active in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
The extremely active season outran everybody’s predictions. NOAA had predicted 18-21 named storms for 205; we had 26. They predicted 9 to 11 hurricanes; we ended up with 13. Closer to the mark was the prediction for 5-7 major hurricanes; we had 7.
Records set this year include 26 named storms, beating the previous record of 21 in 1933. We also had three category 5 hurricanes (Katrina, Rita, and Wilma), topping the previous record of 2 in 1960 and 1961.
The record setting weather we saw in this year’s hurricane season may continue in 2006. Although it’s almost 6 months until the season starts again, in Washington, NOAA administrator Navy Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr. told Congress that “I would like to be able to tell you that next year will be calmer, but I can’t.”
Two more tidbits: The weather service said that the large number of storms this season was NOT caused by global warming — instead, they are part of an active tropical cycle going back to 1995. And, if we have yet another storm (do they track storms in December?), it will be Zeta.
If you want to read more, you can see the NOAA press release on the 2005 hurricane season.
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