The National Hurricane Center has issued its final advisory on Tropical Depression Dolly. Thus, for the first time since Bertha formed on July 3 — exactly three weeks ago — there are no active tropical cyclones in the Atlantic basin.
From the meaningless-statistics department: three weeks of consecutive tropical activity is the longest such stretch since the heart of the 2006 season, when Debby, Ernesto and Florence churned up the ocean from August 21 through September 19. To have such a streak in August and September — basically straddling the climatological peak of hurricane season, September 10 — isn’t terribly unusual. To have it in July is pretty remarkable.
Now, we may be in for a stretch of inactivity, which would be more typical for this time of year. As I mentioned earlier, Dr. Jeff Masters wrote this morning that “the four reliable computer models are not predicting development anywhere … in the Atlantic for the next 7 days.”
If that prediction is borne out, I’m sure the National Hurricane Center forecasters will appreciate the breather.
In other news, the NHC has posted a high-resolution satellite movie of Dolly making landfall. It’s really neat.
UPDATE: Welcome, InstaPundit readers! This isn’t really my “Dolly wrap-up” post, though. My wrap-up post is here.
UPDATE 2: A rant on “hype.”
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