This year’s Atlantic Ocean hurricane season has had a distinct whiplash vibe.
It started in May with predictions of an above-average Atlantic hurricane season. June through August passed with barely a peep from the tropics, and then
wham! — two significant, potentially devastating storms formed and struck parts of the U.S. within a week of one another. First, Hurricane Fiona dropped 30 inches of rain on Puerto Rico and knocked power out to the entire island, and now Hurricane Ian is barreling toward the west coast of Florida, threatening a dangerous storm surge in Tampa, Fort Myers and elsewhere.
“It has been an unusual year,” said Phil Klotzbach, a senior research scientist and hurricane expert at Colorado State University. “We had no named storms in August for the first time since 1997, and since then
we’ve had six named storms, four hurricanes and two major hurricanes.”