The early forecast for this year’s hurricane season is for just three hurricanes, based on presentations given at the National Hurricane Center’s annual conference and reported by the Miami Herald and Washington Post (for story, click here). The quieter than normal conditions are forecast due to the predicted onset of El Nino later this year. At the conference, forecasters spent a lot of time discussing last year’s poor forecast, which they attributed to changes in deep ocean circulation that can only be detected in real time. Other scientists have attributed the lack of favorable conditions last year to Saharan dust which cooled Atlantic Ocean waters and reduced the development of tropical storms. However, even a quiet season can have profound impacts on agriculture in the area over which the storm passes (see my blog post from earlier this week about limes). In the Southeast, a quiet tropical season can mean reduced damage from storm-force winds and a reduction in rainfall in late summer and early fall, although there are many other causes of rainfall in the region which can affect precipitation totals.
