Storm season nearly over

• By AMY WOLD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Nov 2, 2009

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Officially, there’s still another month of hurricane season left. But for Louisiana, the season, June 1 through Nov. 30, is all but over.

Since 1851, no hurricane has made landfall in Louisiana in the month of November, said Barry Keim, state climatologist. In fact, since 1851, there hasn’t been a storm to make landfall in November in Texas, Mississippi or Alabama either, he said.

“We’re just about there,” Keim said.

In all, the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season has turned out to be fairly uneventful for the United States, much like forecasters predicted earlier in the season.

With eight named storms, and one U.S. landfall of a tropical storm in Florida so far, most of the storms that did form stayed at sea or died before threatening land.

“It’s obviously nice to get a nice quiet season,” Keim said.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a Category 1 hurricane has sustained winds of 74 to 95 mph; a Category 2 hurricane, sustained winds of 96 to 110 mph; a Category 3 hurricane, sustained winds of 111 to 130 mph; a Category 4 hurricane, sustained winds of 131 to 155 mph; and a Category 5 hurricane, sustained winds exceeding 155 mph.

The long-term average for storms in one season is 11 named storms with six of those becoming hurricanes and two of those becoming major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher.

Of the eight named storms that formed this season, two of them reached Category 3 strength or higher at some point, Keim said.

The first storm to reach major hurricane strength was Hurricane Bill, which stayed around from Aug. 15 through Aug. 24 and got up to Category 4 strength at one point. “Fortunately, it was never really close to land,” Keim said.

Hurricane Bill clipped Newfoundland as a tropical storm, but on its way there created very large surf conditions along the East Coast, said Dennis Feltgen, meteorologist and spokesman for the National Hurricane Center.

Hurricane Bill resulted in two deaths, a 7-year-old girl at Acadia National Park in Maine and a 54-year-old swimmer in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., according to a NOAA preliminary storm report.

The other major hurricane, Hurricane Fred, lasted from Sept. 7 through Sept. 12 and got up to Category 4 strength. It also fell apart before impacting any land, but its remnants were monitored for potential re-formation for days after it lost strength.