I am talking about hurricanes.

The last hurricane to hit Grand Cayman was Hurricane Ivan. And that was in September 2004 and was a Category 5. It was the ninth named storm of the year and the sixth hurricane.

Since then a lot of people have left and a lot of people have arrived. Odds are most of the new arrivals don’t really know what to do when something like a hurricane threatens or don’t have past experience in dealing with these types of storms.

None of us who stayed here during the wrath of Hurricane Ivan will ever forget it.

My wife won’t. It started the day after her 70th birthday on September 10th! And September 10th is the actual PEAK time for hurricanes and tropical Storms in our area. So it was right on cue.

So from a climatological standpoint, things are supposed to get much busier over the next 30 days.

However, one of our Front Page stories yesterday blazed the headline “Increased likelihood of below-normal Atlantic hurricane season”.

“The NOAA Climate Prediction Center’s updated 2015 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook calls for a 90 percent chance of a below-normal hurricane season. A below-normal season is now even more likely than predicted in May, when the likelihood of a below-normal season was 70 percent,” the article said.

The 90 percent probability of a below-normal season is the highest confidence level given by NOAA since seasonal hurricane outlooks began in 1998.

So what’s amiss in the tropics?

Joe Lauria author of Joe’s Weather Blog asks the question “Where are the hurricanes?”

Joe answers the question:

“This year one of the reasons why we’re having a tougher time seeing organized systems that have the potential of becoming something more noteworthy is the developing El Nino which is in progress in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. The map below via WeatherBell and notated by myself, shows the sea surface temperatures anomalies across the world. I’m most interested in what’s happening in the Pacific closer to the equator and also in the Atlantic north of the equator.

“Where you see redder colors, that’s warmer than average water and where you see bluer waters, that’s cooler than average conditions. Tropical systems don’t like to have cooler than average waters to go over. That reduces the amount of potential energy that the systems can ingest in a sense. It would be like a car than needs premium gas that instead is forced to use sub standard less than regular type gas. They can run perhaps but not too efficiently.

“It’s interesting to note as well the vast expanse of warmer than average sea surface temperatures off the coast of Spain and westwards…that would suggest that IF possible a tropical system might be able to maintain it’s strength longer IF it can work it’s way into those waters…however the typical breeding ground is farther south.

“Over the net 10 days or so the points of genesis of named storms are scattered through a good part of the Atlantic basin…

“It’s going to be tough to get anything going in the Atlantic region east of the Caribbean islands because of the current atmospheric set-up which I want to talk about next.

“That’s at the surface…aloft is another matter because El Nino’s create unfavorable wind shear in the area where we look for tropical development in the Caribbean. These stronger areas of winds aloft rip apart disturbances that somehow manage to get through the somewhat hostile conditions along their journey between 5-20° north latitude north of the equator on the Atlantic side.”

To read the whole blog go to: http://fox4kc.com/2015/08/09/joes-weather-blog-where-are-the-hurricanes/

I must end, however, as I began. Don’t let your guard down – it only takes one.

GRAPHICS: Joe’s Weather Blog