Hurricane Season Started Slow, Finished with Destruction
(CNN) – As the hurricane season closes, a handful of blockbuster storms made history after a quiet first half of the season.“Overall, the season was less active than we anticipated,” said Phil Klotzbach, research scientist at Colorado State University. “We (and most other groups) forecast an above-normal season, and the season ended up pretty much dead-on average.”The season ended with 14 named storms, eight hurricanes, and two major hurricanes.
An average season has 14 named storms, seven hurricanes, and three major hurricanes.This was an average season by a simple storm count, but it was anything but average if you dig into the stats.A quiet August was one of the most surprising things about the 2022 season.
It was the first August without any named storms since 1997.In fact, we didn't have any named storms from July 3 to August 31, the first time that's occurred since 1941.“While the first two-thirds of the season were pretty anemic in an aggregate sense, it only takes one storm to make it an extremely damaging (and deadly) year,” Klotzbach said.One of those storms was Hurricane Ian, which hit land in late September and will go down as the most memorable storm of the 2022 season.
It led to more than 100 deaths, most by drowning, and more than more than $50 billion in estimated damages.RELATED: Pics Show Ian’s Horrific Trail of Destruction“When Ian became a hurricane, it was only the fourth hurricane of the year,” Klotzbach told CNN. “The average fourth hurricane forms on September 16, and Ian didn't reach that intensity until September 26.”Ian’s forecast by the National Hurricane Center was dead on, but the storm surge came with an intensity never seen in Southwest Florida.“Ian tied Hurricane Charley in 2004 as the.
