The Atlantic Ocean has been calm this year. Typically, by the first day of fall, waves would have been whipped up at least once by a hurricane. But this year is different. “The statistical peak of hurricane season is right around Sept. 10,” says Bob Robichaud, a meteorologist with the Canadian Hurricane Centre. “Typically, in an average year we have about 10 named storms and five hurricanes by this time.” So far this year, there have been six named storms, but none have gathered enough fuel to develop into a hurricane. It’s the first time since satellite records started being kept in the 1960s that there hasn’t been a hurricane in the Atlantic by the first day of fall. “The big culprit right now, everybody’s pointing to this Godzilla of El Niños,” says David Phillips, a climatologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada. El Niño basically stamps out a hurricane before it can form, even if all the ingredients are present. “The water temperatures in the Caribbean and the gulf stream and off of Atlantic Canada are warm enough and off the coast of Africa, where these things often get started, the waters are there, but the circulation is just not in the right kind of condition,” Phillips says. Not that anyone is complaining with hurricanes Lee and Fiona still fresh in many Maritimers’ minds. Those who deal with destructive weather events aren’t ready to put away their emergency supplies just yet. “Nobody at the Red Cross is thinking, ‘Okay, we’re off Scot free this year,” says Ancel Langille, emergency management director of the Canadian Red Cross. “We preposition our stocks, our costs, our blankets, have our vehicles ready to go.” Despite the quiet fall so far, a hurricane could form later this year. Hurricane Melissa formed in the Atlantic last year in late October and devastated Jamaica.
