Hurricane Season Leaves Memories Of Barry, Dorian, Imelda, Nestor

MIAMI, FL — The Atlantic hurricane season drew to a close Saturday, leaving us with memories of Barry, Dorian, Imelda and Nestor along with frantic searches for bottled water and gasoline in a number of Florida cities.

Despite an above-normal Atlantic hurricane season, things could have been much worse for the Sunshine State.

"The one that I think most people were paying attention to was Hurricane Dorian," explained Warning Coordination Meteorologist Robert Molleda with the National Weather Service in Miami. "Dorian was really far enough offshore that we didn't get any direct impacts.

"Dorian ... was a big scare, but it was a near miss," Molleda was quick to add.

The threat of the major hurricane barreling toward the Florida peninsula alone was serious enough to send people heading to evacuation shelters and give thousands of school children an extended Labor Day holiday. Even Disney closed early.

But Florida was spared the catastrophic damage that islands in the Bahamas sustained when the slow-moving storm made two separate landfalls on the islands.

While Dorian caused horrific damage and loss of life in the Bahamas, Florida admittedly dodged a bullet.

"The previous three years we had impacts of Michael in 2018. We had Irma in 2017. We had Matthew in 2016," Molleda recalled. "This year, Florida did get by pretty OK, without having any direct impacts from the storms."

While there's still a chance that one last storm will pop up before midnight Nov. 30, it is extremely unlikely.

"We are not expecting any tropical cyclone activity for the next five days," Molleda told Patch on Wednesday. "That should take us through the end of the official hurricane season."

That's not to say there can't be a hurricane outside of the traditional hurricane season.

"Hurricane Kate was the latest to strike the United States as a hurricane on record," Molleda explained. "It made landfall in the Florida Panhandle on Nov. 22, 1985."

The 2019 season saw increased tropical activity from mid August through October, producing 18 named storms, including six that were considered “major” category 3, 4 and 5 storms.

Hurricane experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had predicted a total of 10-17 named storms, including five to nine hurricanes and two to four major hurricanes. An average season has 12 named storms, six hurricanes and three major hurricanes.

This year marks the fourth consecutive above-normal Atlantic hurricane season. The only other period on record that produced four consecutive above-normal seasons was 1998-2001.

Five tropical cyclones also formed in the Gulf of Mexico this year, tying a record set in 2003 and again in 1957 for the most storms to form in that region. Of the Gulf storms, three — Barry, Imelda and Nestor — made landfall in the U.S.

NOAA’s hurricane hunter aircraft and crews flew a total of 57 missions amounting to 430 hours during the 2019 season season along with flights by the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron of the U.S. Air Force Reserve, according to weather officials.

In addition, NOAA’s King Air crew collected more than 26,939 aerial images covering more than 4,300 square miles of areas affected by Hurricane Dorian, including shorelines, ports and inland areas of the Bahamas.

NOAA and NOAA-supported researchers from the U.S. and Caribbean deployed another 30 autonomous ocean glider missions in the Atlantic with more than 75,000 observations of ocean temperature and salinity to operational hurricane forecast models.

Hurricane Dorian is tied with three other hurricanes — the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane, 1988’s Hurricane Gilbert and 2005’s Hurricane Wilma — as the second strongest hurricane on record in the Atlantic basin in terms of wind at 185 mph.

In all, four storms made landfall in the U.S. during the 2019 season: Barry, Dorian, Imelda and Nestor.

“This season’s activity ramped up in mid-August during the normal peak of the season, as we predicted,” observed Gerry Bell, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. “The above-normal activity is consistent with the ongoing high-activity era, driven largely by the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, which entered a warm phase in 1995."

Bell attributed the stronger and longer-lasting storms this year to a stronger West African monsoon, warmer Atlantic waters and weak vertical wind shear across the western Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.

The 2020 hurricane season won't officially begin until June 1, 2020 but Molleda said there are things that people can do now to get ready.

"It's never a bad time to review your plans, review what you have," he said. "For example, home improvement stuff like shutters or windows — any repairs that need to be done or upgrades to your home ... If you can do it early, obviously the earlier the better."