It Seems Every Atlantic Hurricane Season Has Been 'Active' Lately. Here's When the Last 'Quiet' Season Happened.

Does it seem like every Atlantic hurricane season lately has been busy, active, destructive, awful, or whatever adjective you'd like to fill in the blank?

We understand the sentiment, but quieter hurricane seasons do happen. It's just been a while since we've had one.

According to a metric known as the ACE (Accumulated Cyclone Energy) index, which takes into account not just the number, but also the intensity and longevity of storms and hurricanes, we've had six consecutive active hurricane seasons.

Prior to that, as the bar graph below shows, there were three years that had well below-average activity last decade.

The most recent of these was in 2015. Only 11 storms formed, four of which became hurricanes and only two strengthened to Category 3 or stronger. Each was roughly one-third of the tallies from the 2020 season.

One factor behind a less active 2015 was one of the strongest El Niños on record.

This periodic warming of the equatorial eastern Pacific Ocean tends to produce stronger wind shear and sinking air over the Caribbean Sea and adjacent areas of the Atlantic Basin. Those suppressing factors tend to weaken or rip apart a tropical cyclone.

This increased wind shear in 2015 contributed to the demise of five storms in the heart of that season.

The effect is the opposite with La Niña, making conditions more favorable for tropical development. La Niña has been in place and likely was a contributing factor in the active 2016, 2017, 2020 and 2021 seasons.

In 2014, six hurricanes formed, but only eight total storms developed that entire season. That was the least in any year since 1997.

While El Niño hadn't become established yet in 2014, wind shear not just over the Caribbean Sea, but also eastward from the Lesser Antilles to the west African coast from June through August was the second highest on record for that three-month period.

As we wrote at the time, the atmosphere was also unusually stable and not supportive of the thunderstorms needed to develop and maintain tropical cyclones in that same strip of the tropical Atlantic Ocean in 2014.

The 2013 season was even more strange.

Of 14 storms that year, only two managed to become hurricanes, tied for the fewest in any hurricane season in the satellite era (since the mid-1960s.).

Neither of those two hurricanes managed to reach Category 2 status, something that hadn't happened in any season since 1968, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Despite a lack of an El Niño, eight of that season's storms eventually succumbed to either dry air, strong wind shear or both.

Some other quiet seasons this century included 2009 - nine storms, three hurricanes during a weak to moderate El Niño - and 2006 - only 10 storms the year following the record 2005 season.

During the cool phase of a 20- to 40-year oscillation of North Atlantic Ocean sea-surface temperature known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, less active hurricane seasons were quite common in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Eight of the 15 hurricane seasons from 1980 through 1994 produced less than 10 storms.

It Only Takes One

This doesn't mean these quieter seasons are necessarily less dangerous.

Immediately following another strong El Niño, only four named storms formed in 1983, the least in any season in the satellite era.

However, one was Category 3 Hurricane Alicia, which ransacked the Houston metro area with destructive winds and storm surge flooding.

The three "quiet" years in the 2010s still managed to produce three storms that were deadly and/or destructive enough to be retired from future use in name lists: Hurricane Ingrid (2013), Tropical Storm Erika (2015) and Hurricane Joaquin (2015).

It only takes one landfall to have a damaging impact, whether it's the nation's only landfall, or one of many in a given hurricane season.

Six-Year Hurricane Fatigue

Consider just the past two frenetic seasons:

-51 total named storms in 2020 and 2021 combined, the first time the name list was used up in back-to-back seasons.

-21 total hurricanes was three seasons' worth combined into two.

-19 storms made a mainland U.S. landfall, eight of which were hurricanes.

An average hurricane season from 1991-2020 has produced 14 storms, seven hurricanes and 1 to 2 mainland U.S. hurricane landfalls.

(MORE: 'Ida' Officially Retired From Future Atlantic Name Lists)

But it hasn't only been the past two years.

Dorian's catastrophic stall over the Bahamas happened in 2019.

Florence's record wet siege in the Carolinas was followed by Category 5 Michael's pummeling of the Florida Panhandle in 2018.

In 2017, the catastrophic trio of Harvey, Irma and Maria were among 10 hurricanes that year.

According to NOAA's National Centers For Environmental Information, there have been 19 tropical storms and hurricanes that have each produced at least $1 billion damage in the U.S. from 2016 through 2021.

The total damage toll from those 19 storms was a staggering $507.9 billion, or half a trillion dollars.

Unfortunately, the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season is expected to continue this active streak.

Whether an active or quiet season is forecast, you should be prepared every hurricane season.

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.