[The rapidly intensifying Hurricane Lorenzo makes landfall.] I've done my latest Daily Green "Storm Pundit" post, about how this hurricane season is in some ways a lion, in others a lamb. Excerpt:
In short, not even a third of the named storms have attained hurricane strength this year, whereas over the previous four years, something much closer to a half have become at least this strong. (Note, however, that this year's Tropical Storm Karen may be upgraded to hurricane status in post-season reanalysis.) One reason for the relative quietude is that despite La Nina conditions in the Pacific ocean, we're still seeing lots of strong vertical wind shear over the Atlantic. Ingrid, Karen, Melissa -- all have been done in by powerful shear, which has separated the storms' thunderstorms from their centers and thereby prevented organization and development. So what seems to be happening is that while we're seeing many initial disturbances with hurricane potential -- a lot of which have become tropical depressions or tropical storms -- we're also seeing very few storms actually live up to that potential due to an unfavorable environment in terms of atmospheric winds. However, for the few storms that have found themselves in a friendly environment -- Dean, Felix, Humberto, Lorenzo -- intensification has been rapid and in some cases record-setting.
You can read the rest here.
