Experts predicted more hurricanes this summer – where are the ‘missing’ storms?

Hurricane Beryl is a reminder that hurricanes can still do catastrophic damage, writes Francesca Morris.

Shermaine Baptiste, left, and a friend look into her destroyed bedroom after it was hit by Hurricane Beryl in Clifton, Union Island, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Thursday, July 4. Picture: Lucanus Ollivierre/AP

BACK in April and May, various universities and weather agencies predicted there would be more hurricanes in the Atlantic than usual this year. Warm seas meant conditions were perfect for a particularly active season, they said, with somewhere between 15 and 25 named storms.

Yet by mid-September, the typical peak of the hurricane season, only seven storms have been named. Where are the “missing” hurricanes in the Caribbean? To understand what happened, and why the models seemingly got it so wrong, we can’t look at the Atlantic in isolation. The key difference this year was unprecedented rain in an unexpected place: The Sahara desert.