2000 Hurricanes
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As we look back today on the North Atlantic's hurricane season of 2000, we can recall tropical bullets whizzing all around the U.S. But, we managed to dodge just about all of them. Hi I'm Dave Thurlow for the Weather Notebook.

It was a busy hurricane season in the Atlantic for the third straight year. There were 14 named storms, and 8 of those were hurricanes. That's about 30% above average. But where did all these systems go? Mainly away from the U.S. Not a single full-blown hurricane made landfall on U.S. shores in 2000. We saw only two tropical storms make it inland, Gordon and Helene. Both of those hit the upper coast of Florida with very little fanfare. So, what happened to all the others? Some went south. Mexico did see several tropical storm and hurricane landfalls, although none of them were catastrophic. Most of the other systems this year shifted course into the open Atlantic well before they got to North America. One of those was a storm to remember-but not because of its damage. Alberto, the season's first storm, made a complete loop and dilly-dallied over the open ocean for almost three weeks before it finally fell to pieces. That made it the third-longest-lived hurricane in Atlantic history.

As for our quiet year in the U.S., we were actually due for it. Since 1900, the U.S. has avoided a hurricane about every six years-and what do you know? Our last hurricane-free year was exactly six years ago, in 1994.

Our show is written by Bob Henson, supported by the National Science Foundation and is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory in North Conway, New Hampshire.