Here’s some really good news: the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season was the tamest in 12 years. For the first time in three seasons, not a single hurricane made landfall in the United States. Researchers at Colorado State University point out that for the first time in a generation, the Atlantic Coast was spared major land-falling hurricanes – defined as those with peak winds of at least 111 m.p.h. – for four consecutive seasons. And this marked the second time in four years that the Federal Emergency Management Agency declared no hurricane or tropical-storm disasters at all.

For the season, a total of nine named storms, those with winds of 39 m.p.h., formed in the Atlantic Basin. The average is 11. Of those, three became hurricanes; the average is six. Taxpayers and coastal residents can thank El Nino, an area of warmer-than-normal surface waters covering a continent-size region of the tropical Pacific that can rip apart incipient tropical storms that try to form thousands of miles away in the subtropical Atlantic. This was the quietest season since 1997. Not coincidentally, that also was an El Nino year.

The lackluster 2009 hurricane season is truly a case of “no news is good news.” The sound you hear is a collective sigh of relief from insurance executives, along with residents of Florida, Louisiana and the other coastal states.

December 9, 2009