The 2017 Atlantic Hurricane Season begins today,
Thursday, June 1 and ends on Thursday,
November 30. This season will hopefully
be as calm for us here in the Keys as the last few have been. If prognosticators are right, 2017’s
hurricane season will produce fewer storms than normal. Plus the storms will be of less intense and less
of a chance that they will make landfall.
El Niño is the determining factor for
2017, Pacific weather phenomenon could once again determine how rough the
Atlantic hurricane season gets. We could
see a repeat of an active 2016 season, or the return of the sedate years that
preceded last year.
El Niño is a weather phenomenon is when
warmer than average water temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific creates
high-altitude winds that move across the tropical Atlantic Ocean making it
harder for storms to form and strengthen.
If El Niño performs as expected in the Pacific, it should tamp down on
storm formations in the Atlantic.
Remember, the Atlantic has already seen its first storm of 2017, back in
April, when Tropical Storm Arlene formed east of Bermuda, lasted only three
days and did not impact land.
Let’s hope that it is a calm season, we
don’t need another year like last year where hurricanes did so much damage to
the Eastern Florida coast and the Bahamas.
