I was outside this morning having my first cup of coffee and looking at the dismal progress of my tomatoes, (which are totally failing to ripen) and it got me to thinking about the odd weather we’ve been having this summer. Summer is, of course, the traditional hurricane season, but have you seen many of them in the news? I haven’t seen much about it in the blogosphere. I stopped by the National Hurricane Center to take a peek at what was coming down the pipe.

Click on the image for the full size picture and you’ll get a bit of a surprise. On August 9, in the height of the season, the Atlantic is looking as calm as a mill pond. There is zero cyclonic activity at the moment. True, there is a typhoon moving toward Taiwan this morning and we had one Pacific hurricane that briefly looked like it was heading for Hawaii, but it turned North and completely fizzled.

By contrast, here is a map of the hurricane tracks from the infamous summer of 2005, just four years ago. (Again, click on the image for the full map.) In the hot season from the last week of July until the first week of September, we saw twelve storms, with seven of them reaching hurricane strength including the historic Katrina. What the heck is going on here?

Sure, we could go with the easy and most obvious answer. God clearly hated George W. Bush but smiles benevolently upon Barack Obama, so we were beaten up during the last administration and will be kept safe now that our new President is in office. But the most obvious explanation isn’t always the right one. Could it be something else?

Here’s a brief look at the number of hurricane force storms we’ve had in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico over the last fifteen years. (Yet again, click for full size.) You can combine that with the long term numbers over the period of time when we’ve been keeping records. From 1957 until today, the annual average has increased, but that increase is less than one for any given year. Going back to the last graph, if we can draw one conclusion, it’s that we generally get a different number of hurricanes from year to year and that number swings all over the place. The average will slowly change, but not by much. There does seem to be a marked increase over the estimated numbers in the 1800’s, but keep in mind that we didn’t exactly have satellites back then. We only knew about the ones that either hit our shores or came within sight of ships that survived to tell the tale. A fair number of Atlantic storms each year swerve north and dissipate without ever coming near land.

While we’re on the subject of weather this weekend, I wanted to give you an update on Nate Silver’s Global Warming Challenge. When last we checked on July 18, I was in the lead over Nate by $400. That included June, from the start of summer and a bit less than three weeks of July. Now we can finish up July and add in the first eight days of August as well. The tally now stands at:

Jazz: (Days where high temp was below avg.) 38
Nate: (Days where high temp was above avg.) 8
Tie: (Days where the high temp matched the avg. high) 3

So in our hypothetical bet, I’m now up on Nate by 30 days, so I’m $750 to the good. Does this mean the planet is or isn’t getting warmer? No. It means it’s a rather cool and rainy summer where I live, which happens from time to time and messes up my gardening schedule. And we’ve thus far had exactly one unnamed tropical depression in the Atlantic since the season began. Does this mean that the global menace of hurricanes has finally been defeated? No. We’re just getting lucky this year, as we do from time to time. Next year could be worse or it could be even better. And if you think you already know what will happen next season… you don’t.

Enjoy your Sunday, everyone.