All Quiet For Now

You see this?

For the first time in over a month, the tropics are quiet.

This Atlantic hurricane season has been an active one, but with Sally, Teddy, Beta and finally Paulette gone for good, the Atlantic basin is clear of any organized storms.

So now we can rest easy, right?  Uh, no, we can't.  See, the hurricane season doesn't end for another two months, and we're still five storms short of the predicted 28 storms for the Atlantic basin this year . . . and next.  The last (and only previous) season that was active enough to produce storms that required Greek letters for names, the 2005 season, lasted into 2006.  And October s nown for producing some bad hurricanes and tropical storms.  Only in the coming month, they will be forming more in the Caribbean Sea than the Atlantic Ocean, and in fact Hurricane Sandy in 2012 originated off the coast of Nicaragua before making its way to the American Northeast .  And - remember! - at least one almanac has predicted a hurricane threat for some time around Columbus day.  At least one computer projection simulated a tropical storm for that approximate period hiting the Northeast, though another projection from the same source (the GFS, for the record) indicated a storm hitting the Gulf Coast at about that same time instead.  None of this is written in stone, of course.  As Long Island weatherman Joe Cioffi explains on his own Web site, troughs will be dropping into the Eastern half of the United States, which "makes for interesting scenarios under certain circumstances."

Like another Sandy?

Let's wait and see what happens.  Just remember, its not over yet.