The 2015 Atlantic hurricane season peaks Thursday, a notable climatological event in that, historically, a tropical storm or hurricane was most often blustering through the Atlantic basin on this day.The Galveston hurricane in 1900 made landfall on September 8th.
Whether Mother Nature follows her own rules by whipping up a cluster of thunderstorms near Bermuda into Tropical Storm Henri seemed likely late Wednesday. If Henri isn’t named Thursday, it will mark one of only three years in the past 15 that a tropical storm or hurricane wasn’t swirling somewhere in the Atlantic on Sept. 10.
So what can be said about the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season on its peak date?
It has the will, but not the fortitude.
“They haven’t been a big threat, they haven’t lasted very long, and they haven’t gotten very strong,” said Florida International University hurricane expert Hugh Willoughby summing up this year’s storms.
While the first few months have seemed apathetic in terms of storm creation, it is actually following along on schedule, if not slightly ahead for the number of named storms formed. If tropical depression 8 becomes Henri Thursday, it will mark eight named storms this year compared to the historic norm at this time in the season of 6.6.
At the same time, the so-called “accumulated cyclone energy” — a measure of storm strength and duration — is about half of what is normally expected this time of year.
Hurricane-force winds have been experienced on just 3.75 days between Danny and Fred combined. An average year would have had 9.3 days of hurricane winds at this point, said Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane research scientist with Colorado State University who publishes a seasonal forecast....MORE
It killed between 6000 and 12000 people, with most of the bodies washed out to sea and never recovered..
