Amanda Whips In Hurricane Season

Amanda got off the 2014 Eastern Pacific hurricane season with a powerful start, as her winds to 135 knots made her one of the most powerful May hurricanes on record. Fortunately, she was like most Mexican hurricanes in that she started and matured far out to sea. Currently about 900 miles south of Cabo, Amanda is fizzling and not expected to be any threat to land.

Another hurricane-related fizzler was the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s hurricane forecast for the Atlantic/Caribbean last season. They had forecast an "active to extremely active" hurricane season, featuring 13 to 20 named storms, 11 of which would become hurricanes, including three to six major hurricanes. While there were 13 systems in the 2013 season, only two became hurricanes, neither of them major hurricanes (meaning category 3 or higher). In a normal season, to say nothing of an "active to extremely active" season, the Atlantic gets three major hurricanes. So this was an Amanda-force whiff on the part of NOAA. What was the problem? The same problem as always with forecasting hurricanes — too many variables.

To the best of our knowledge, nobody complained about the lack of hurricanes.