Where are all the storms???

Another mid autumn for hurricanes...

Noel, which already has killed 20 people in the Dominican Republic, might yet turn into a hurricane. And it's hard to know what the last month of the hurricane season, beginning Thursday, will bring.

But Ryan Maue of Florida State University's Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies says it looks like 2007 will go down as a lamb. "Unless a dramatic and historical flurry of activity occurs in the next nine weeks," Maue writes, "2007 will rank as a historically inactive tropical cyclone year for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole."

In the past 30 years, Maue adds, only 1977 had less hurricane activity when comparing periods beginning Jan. 1 and lasting through Oct. 30. What's more, this past September had the lowest activity since 1977 while the Octobers of 2006 and 2007 had the lowest activity since 1976 and 1977.

In case the data so far are unconvincing, we add this: The North Atlantic hurricane season is 29% below normal, the Northern Hemisphere 33% below normal. The Western Pacific is off 27% while the Eastern Pacific is 60% behind its typical rate of activity.

We concede that next year might be the worst hurricane season on record. But it's just as likely to be a repeat of this year. No one can reasonably predict what the storm count and intensity will be in 2008.

What we can expect is the alarmists' storm of nonsense to keep coming. They won't give up on global warming until they've found a new calamity they can use to scare everyone.