Quiet hurricane season so far in the Maritimes

Atlantic Canada has had a relatively quiet hurricane season so far this year.

As September draws to a close, experts say the ongoing hurricane season has been fairly mild in the Maritimes.

“So far it’s been a very quiet hurricane season…especially here in Canada. We had Hurricane Erin that was offshore and that was a few months ago and that brought some heavy waves to the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia,” says Chris Fogarty, manager of the Canadian Hurricane Centre.

Hurricane season in the Maritimes typically gets going in September and historically some of the biggest storms (Fiona in 2022, Dorian in 2019 and Juan in 2003) have arrived in that month.

“Active hurricane season is when the atmospheric winds are more favourable to allow the storms to develop. We are not seeing that so much this year but anticipate things to increase in the next few weeks heading into October and things will be quite active, I think,” says Fogarty.

For fishermen, the weather had been on their side so far. Bernie Berry with the Coldwater Lobster Association is preparing for lobster season now but says they got lucky with weather throughout the summer fishing season.

“This is probably one of the best years for lack of activity. There has been a few disturbances and I think one might be going into the North Carolina and maybe the remnants of a storm and things like that but we have had nothing,” says Berry.

“We don’t have to worry about lashing boats down and putting stuff away. We still have a large timeframe as the official season ends on Dec. 1 but if we can get into late October, usually it’s a safe bet.”

CTV News Atlantic Chief Meteorologist Kalin Mitchell says the only storm in the Atlantic is Humberto and there is no sight yet that it is a risk to the region.

“There is Hurricane Humberto, which is currently south of Bermuda, and that will move towards Atlantic Canada next week, the later part of next week,” says Fogarty.

Emergency services across the region say they are prepared, but are grateful it’s been an uneventful hurricane season so far.

“From a fire perspective, if something is coming in, they will start preparing and making sure everything in the station is ready and secured, all vehicles are topped up, fuel depots are working and topped up, crews are ready,” says Deputy Chief Roy Hollett with Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency.

“What we do throughout the year is maintaining our ongoing training and we will do various exercises and even if the exercise may not be hurricane related, just an exercise for an emergency gets us thinking and planning for that concept.”

Fogarty says there could be more severe storms this winter if no hurricanes arrive this season.

“Some of the science suggests if you have a quiet summer with few storms that the atmosphere needs to make up for that quiet activity because the atmosphere is always producing storms to balance things out. If you have a quiet summer with not many storms or hurricanes, there is a tendency for the winter to be particularly active,” says Fogarty.