For the second year in a row, meteorologists expected a worse Atlantic hurricane season than the one we experienced, and meteorologists are beginning to be concerned that future predictions will not be taken seriously.
The conditions this year were ripe for intense hurricane activity. Seventeen named storms were predicted, but the season only produced 14. Only two of the 14 storms were were extremely intense: hurricanes Dean in August and Felix in September. These storms caused catastrophic damage in Mexico.
Meteorologists are still puzzling over the reason for the lower-than-predicted hurricane rate. It is likely that windblown dust from Africa blocked sunlight and keep water temperatures down near the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.
"We are in a time until about 2020 that hurricane threats will be more frequent and more intense on our coastlines. So instead of saying, Ha, ha, ha, there's nothing going on, people should be thankful that there's not as much going on," says Joe Bastardi, a meteorologist with the private weather forecasting service AccuWeather. link
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