Ana, Bill and Co. Already Here

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Wheather is too hot, hurricanes expected

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Tropical Storm Ana was at 14.4 north and longitude 50.0 west or about 805 miles east of the Leeward Islands this Saturday.  Ana is the first Tropical Storm named in this Hurricane Season for the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean.

Tropical Storm Bill also was formed Saturday afternoon, with winds of 40 mph,  located about 820 miles west-southwest of the Cape Verde islands. Strengthening is expected for the next 24-48 hours.

The Season is here, so get ready, folks.   

According to magazine Nature never in the past thousand years have been registered a frequency so high of hurricanes in the Atlantic. In the last 10 years there have been an average of 17 hurricanes and tropical storms, comparable to the “climatic anomaly” in the Period of Medieval Heating, one millennium ago

  EXPLANATIONS FOR A DELAY

According to scientists, despite  the waters of the Caribbean Sea and the tropical Atlantic continue hot, the  retard of the first TS is due to... dust in the wind. Powder coming from the Sahara is transported from the African continent toward the west by a flow of winds, expanding over the Atlantic and the Caribbean region. As the scientists explain, that powder particles reduces the size of the rain drops and minimize the formation of clouds, so there is minor probability for the development of vertical rains.

For that reason,  almost all the Tropical waves departing from the African coasts have been weaken and lose their rainy areas, reducing to the minimum the probability to become a tropical storm or a hurricane, the first of them will be named "Ana". 

Another reason that could delay the beginning of this season is the presence of "El Niño", a climatological event  that would reach its maximum intensity by the end of this year in the waters of the Equatorial Pacific.  This event, also known as  ENOS or South Oscillation causes overheating of the marine marine waters in a wide area of the Ocean Pacific.

 Here, a review of TS per year, since 1998:

1998 14
1999 12  
2000 14
2001 15
2002 12 
2003 16 
2004 15 
2005 28 (Record. 15 of them  hurricanes) 

2006 10

2007 15

2008 16. 

For more information, you can visit www.nhc.noaa.gov (National Hurricane Centre of Miami) and www.insmet.cu (Cuban Meteorology Institute).