More about that last bit later. First, let the 2014 Atlantic Hurricane Season Grand Reckoning begin! Officially we had a whopping 8 named storms this year, of which 6 were hurricanes and 2 were major.
I think the final tally should have been 7 named storms, 4 Hurricanes, with 1 major Hurricane. Tropical Storm Dolly was in existence for less than a day and remained extremely weak in early September. Hurricane Bertha was pretty wishy-washy and Hurricane Cristobel was a bit wibbly-wobbly. And although Hurricane Edouard snuck in as the first major hurricane of 2014 when I wasn't looking, he barely reached that strength for a couple of hours and then fell apart extremely rapidly.
Again, by an amazing coincidence, and for at least the second year in recent memory, the number of storms that were officially named matches the minimum number of storms that NOAA predicted would be named! Their forecast at the start of the season called for 8-13 named storms (leaving quite a lot of wiggle room there). Hmm. Don't you love coincidences? ;-)
My final hurricane comment this year: In this age of satellites and on-line information, everyone can see what is going on if they know what to look for. (It's so much fun! :-)) Now if the forecast was simply for a below-average year and there weren't any numbers of storms etc., perhaps one (and other ones that one knows) wouldn't question the motives behind some of these storm forecasts.
And that's it for this lovely, sleepy little season! :-)
As usual, I need to wrap with my annual award-breaking thank you speech. :-) I'd like to thank Doug M. at CMS/USF (www.marine.usf.edu) in Florida for help with the listserv and to Chris H. in Georgia and Ben A. for help with the website. I'd also like to thank the NHC for their hard work and for giving me something to rant about. Keep up the good work folks! ;-)
I want to thank YOU! Still the best and most intelligent readers ever. :-) Thank you for reading and for sending me jokes, photos, on the ground reports, comments, and questions. Thanks for telling your friends about my fabulously hilarious, witty, informative, accurate, and entertaining writings. The blog website currently has 82, 366 hits... that's 10, 016 hits since the start of this season in which I only had 28 updates (my quietest season so far)!! :-)
Last, but definitely not least (especially because they know where I live and work!)... I also thank my family and friends for keeping me supplied with wine, cheese and other such essentials of life and for their continued futile attempts to keep me sane. ;-) I really want to thank my husband, Ben Alpi, for coming up with a new caper to keep me out of mischief during this quiet season, so now... I am the Producer (!!) of his next short film, a science fiction called Hashtag! (starring Gigi Edgley of Farscape & Jim Henson's Creature Shop Challenge fame):
Toodle Pip!
J.
Blogs archived at http://jyotikastorms.blogspot.com/
Twitter @JyovianStorm
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DISCLAIMER: These remarks are just what I think/see regarding tropical storms - not the opinion of any organization I represent. If you are making an evacuation decision, please heed your local emergency management and the National Hurricane Center's official forecast and the National Weather Service announcements. This is not an official forecast. If I "run away, run away" (Monty Python), I'll let you know.
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