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Little Hurricanes
Wed Jul 23, 2003
Listen in RealAudio 
They tried their best, but the few hurricanes of 2002 ever did live up to their destructive
potential. And a little fellow over in the Pacific may have had something to do with it. Hi,
I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook.
When there's an El Niņo brewing in the Pacific, it tends to rearrange the upper winds,
and that helps suppress hurricanes in the Atlantic. However, the slow-growing El Niņo
didn't put a complete damper on tropical cyclones last fall. There were twelve named systems
in all. That's actually two above average, which surprised some forecasters. However, only
four of these tropical storms made it to hurricane status, and two of these were wimps, never
topping Category 1.
The two other hurricanes threw a real scare into the Gulf Coast, though. Isidore exploded
into a Category 3 storm off the Yucatan coast, with winds up to 125 miles per hour. Instead
of plowing into the Gulf, Isidore took a detour onto the Yucatan peninsula, where he lingered
for days and slowly tore himself to pieces. He was never quite the same, hitting Louisiana
just below hurricane force.
Lili was stronger at her peak: 145 miles per hour in the southern Gulf. But just as quickly
as she cranked up, Lili wound down from Category 4 to a borderline Category 2 status by the
time she struck Louisiana. Even so, she packed quite a punch in this waterlogged area. The
U.S. damage from Lili totalled 700 million dollars, and eight people were killed.
We've now seen 67 tropical storms in the Atlantic over the past five years. That's more than
30% above average. And some experts think this trend may continue for several more decades.
Bob Henson brought us today's story. The Weather Notebook is supported by Subaru, and the
National Science Foundation.
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