Hurricane Season Ghosted Us...But Something's Stirring Near Bermuda
Five tropical storms. Zero hurricanes. As of mid-September, the traditional peak of hurricane season, that's where the Atlantic stood this year, the slowest start since satellites began watching the tropics in 1966.
The ocean hasn't cooled and the tropics haven't gone dormant. A strong El Niño has stacked up wind shear across the Atlantic, and that shear keeps tearing storms apart before they can organize. It's a pattern with precedent. El Niño years have produced some of the quietest overall seasons on record, and also some of the most infamous single storms: Camille in 1969, Andrew in 1992, Michael in 2018. All three were catastrophic hurricanes born into years that, by the numbers, looked mild. History's lesson isn't that El Niño makes for a safe season. It's that El Niño makes for an uneven one, long stretches of calm interrupted by storms that find the gaps.
Vero Beach has its own recent case study. Hurricane Milton made landfall on Florida's Gulf coast in October 2024, well over a hundred miles from us, but its outer bands reached Indian River County first. Seven tornadoes touched down here, including an EF3 through Lakewood Park and South Vero Beach. Fifty-four homes were destroyed and the county tallied roughly $59 million in damage, more, by the city manager's account, than direct hits from Frances and Jeanne combined back in 2004.
As of this week, the pattern that's defined the whole season is still holding. Tropical Depression Fay is fading in the middle of the Atlantic and isn't expected to amount to much. But the National Hurricane Center is watching a fresh disturbance east of Bermuda, one meteorologists say could organize into a depression within days. Nothing about it points toward Florida yet. It's simply proof the tropics haven't shut down for the year, even if they've been taking their time.
The season runs through November 30, and a slow start historically just shifts activity later into fall, the same stretch that's produced some of Florida's most memorable storms. Worth staying tuned.
