After a week of little to no activity in the tropics, the National Hurricane Center states a system of clouds in the middle of the Atlantic has a 60 percent chance of forming into a tropical system. Should a named storm be produced, it would be named Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet.
So far there have been 15 named storms in the Atlantic Ocean this year. The National Hurricane Center predicted 14 to 19 named storms this year. Of those, it believed seven to 10 would form into hurricanes and three to five of those would be major hurricanes.
If another tropical system forms, it may take a week to reach land, if at all. With the exception of Hurricane Irene, all of the storms that have formed this far out in the Atlantic have missed large landmasses. Tropical Storm Nate was an anomaly when it formed in the Gulf of Mexico and then dumped rain on Mexico. Places like Texas have missed copious amounts of rain even though it is suffering from one of the worst droughts in history.
Hurricane season ends Nov. 30. With just four more storms, the prediction will have reached the upper limit of the named storms. Luckily, forecasters were wrong about the number of hurricanes so far. Only three storms have formed into hurricanes named Irene, Katia and Maria. Maria fizzled. Irene and Katia were major storms.
With more than two months left to go in hurricane season, there is still plenty of time to have more storms. The United States has been spared most of the strong storms as only Irene made landfall. Rain from Tropical Storm Nate dumped rain in the southeastern United States.
For the prediction to come true this year, there will have to be more hurricanes in the Atlantic. That would also put the prediction on the low end of the number of storms. Nothing has yet come close to the record-breaking hurricane season of 2005 when there were 31 storms that made it all the way to Tropical Storm Zeta because they ran out of names.
That year also had an Irene but it didn't make landfall. Hurricane Ophelia also formed in the Atlantic six years ago. Hurricane Katrina was the headline maker in 2005.
Texas and other southern states are still suffering from drought conditions. A hurricane or tropical system would be a good addition for rain to help alleviate some extreme drought . Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Louisiana and Arkansas could all use some more rain.
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