Cayman escapes busy storm season unscathed
(CNS): Another record breaking hurricane season in the Atlantic has come to an end and once again the Cayman Islands remained out of the eyes of the many storms that brewed, The season was above-normal with 20 named storms and unusual because this is an El Nino year, a weather phenomena that usually dampens down storms in the Atlantic. But meteorologists said unprecedented warm temperatures linked to climate change, fueled storm formation. According to NOAA more named storms formed this season in the Atlantic than in any other El Niño year in the modern record.
“The Atlantic basin produced the most named storms of any El Nino influenced year in the modern record,” said Matthew Rosencrans, lead hurricane forecaster at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center in a press release. “The record-warm ocean temperatures in the Atlantic provided a strong counterbalance to the traditional El Nino impacts.”
The 2023 season overall had the fourth-highest number of storms in a single year since 1950.
The first storm activity in 2023, however, was back in January when an unnamed subtropical storm formed a couple of hundred miles off the coast of North Carolina. But the first named storm, Arlene, emerged on the first day of the season and was followed by another 19 storms and hurricanes with Hurricane Tammy dampened things in the Lesser Antilles in October, producing moderate wind and flood damage.
Seven of the storms turned into hurricanes and three of them became major hurricanes. Only one hurricane made landfall in the US when Hurricane Idalia rapidly intensified and landed on Florida’s Gulf coast at the end of August. Although it was a Category 3 storm, damage was limited because it hit a sparsely populated section of the coast. Hurricane Franklin had also rapidly intensified from a category 1 to a category 4 in 24 hours but it caused no damage as it rolled up the Atlantic ocean missing Bermuda by several hundred miles, also in August.
Weather experts agree that given the trends brought on by the warming climate, 2023’s Atlantic hurricane season could’ve been much worse and it was tempered by El Nino preventing many storms from becoming massive hurricanes.
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Category: Local News, Weather
They have been saying this since Ivan.
Happy to have gotten through another hurricane season without a storm. Every year I think about Ivan & the horrific damage caused & pray we never see something like that again. Now bring on Christmas and the wonderful Christmas breeze!
Let me just check the radar to make sure there are no stragglers.
Oh never mind.
Bet insurance rates will still be up again! Maybe the Govt should focus on that instead of grand announcements that insurance company licensing fees won’t be going up!
Insurance company raping me and govt won’t even spare a little Vaseline!
Wait until you are in your 60s, and you find that your monthly health insurance cost could be equal to a mortgage for a three-bedroom house.
Caymanians don’t need health insurance, HSA can’t refuse them care.
There are many levels of health care. Not all the same.
Catastrophe bond market in 2023 on-track to deliver an investment return that might surpass 20% by year-end.
All the climate maniacs are furious more damage wasn’t done… which of course they would use to justify their ‘the end is nigh’ rhetoric!
Fix the damn dump!
hahaha its so true
i didn’t see the paragraph ‘the storms were sympathetic to Cayman with the word at 15,000 feet, it wasn’t fair the place didn’t have radar’
Boring. I told you all that back in June.
thank you for defining the word “boring”. Twice.
whatev’s….now where is the christmas breeze??
told ya!…cayman is safe for many years to come…none of these storms have got the stones to come into the caribbean
We had a profound amount of dry Saharan air (SAL) throughout the year. Also, the jet stream did us some favours.
Things are just weird enough around the world that I’m going to keep watching the weather until January. 😀
Plus the El Niño affect.
Yes, thank you Stormy. That was a benefit also. One would might guess that a warming Pacific trend would produce warmer weather and higher SSTs, and that is true, however, it also elevated the jet stream, which made our potential vorticity less ….. umm….. available, for lack of a better term.
Did anyone contemplate that JuJu’s voodoo might have scared them away?
Just be thankful and don’t be an ass.
Those very words should be over the archway of all government buildings.