Rare quiet storm season winds down

The recent cold snap is one more sign that a sputtering Atlantic hurricane season is as good as gone for the Carolinas. With more than a month to go in the official tropical season, winter-pattern weather is already sweeping the Carolinas.

"Thank El Nino for the persistent hostile (wind) pattern," said Mark Malsick, S.C. Climate Office severe weather liaison. "It really would be hard to have any scenario bringing a hurricane on the beach with 40-degree Canadian air parked over the East Coast."

Shear winds never quit this season in the tropical Atlantic, and most storms shredded at sea. So far, there have been no landfalling hurricanes and almost no tropical storms off the Atlantic in the United States, much less the Lowcountry. One storm did hit. Claudette slapped at Fort Walton Beach, Fla., in August with winds barely more than tropical storm force, then quickly fell apart.

At the time, more eyes were trained on Hurricane Bill, which was churning into a very powerful storm out to sea. But the closest the Lowcountry came to tropical weather was at the end of September, when rains doused the coast from the remnants of Hurricane Fred.

The cold spell itself is about to disperse. Starting today, high temperatures will begin to creep back into the 70s and flirt with the 80s before the end of the week, forecasters said Monday. Nighttime temperatures will be in the 50s.

On Monday, a storm system in the Western Caribbean was showing signs of strengthening into a tropical cyclone. But the long odds were that it would move into Central America, even though forecasters see a small chance of it turning around and coming over southern Florida.

Quiet tropical storm seasons are rare in the Atlantic basin. The last time only one storm hit was 1997, when Hurricane Danny blew ashore on the Gulf Coast with winds so marginal that meteorologists still debate whether it was a hurricane at all. Most wind readings on land were barely tropical storm force, if that.

How rare is a season without a landfall? That, so far, is hard to say.

Since the early 1900s, when records began to be kept, "we've always had something hit the United States," said Dennis Feltgen, with the National Hurricane Center.

Reach Bo Petersen at 843-937-5744 or bpetersen@postandcourier.com.