Hurricane season hit its official peak Thursday and the year so far can perhaps be best summed up this way: El Niño, you da man!
The nickname for the global weather pattern, which rapidly formed in June and has hung tough since, translates to ``the boy,'' of course. But clearly a promotion is in order, given its calming influence on the tropics.
``It's shaping up kind of the way we thought it would,'' said James Franklin, chief of hurricane specialists at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
El Niño, a condition marked by warming Pacific Ocean temperatures, typically tends to reduce both storm numbers and intensity, creating strong winds in the upper atmosphere that can take the wind out of storms. That southwesterly wind shear has been in place for much of the season, said Franklin, who said it was most evident last week when it shredded Tropical Storm Erika.
The effect is reliable enough that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cut its annual hurricane season forecast by nearly a quarter when El Niño emerged, dropping from a busy one to normal or even below normal.
An average season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, produces 11 storms. The total for 2009 is pretty much on that track: six storms to date, two turning into hurricanes, including Fred, which was expected to meander into cooler waters and then oblivion in the far eastern Atlantic by next week.
What El Niño doesn't do is dictate whether storms will make landfill, but the steering currents have been cooperative as well.
Historically, Sept. 10 marks the single busiest day for storms, but if the past is any measure, the tropics won't cool off much through September.
By October, there's also typically another bump upward in activity as forecasters begin to shift their focus from waves rolling off of Africa to the northwest Caribbean, where warm seas can cook up fierce hurricanes.
Most recently, the area spun out Hurricane Wilma in 2005, Franklin said, which became the most intense hurricane on record.
In other words, hurricane season is far from over.
``The way down is usually a little slower than the way up,'' Franklin said.
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