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... As a resident of a coastal region prone to hurricanes, one never wants to tempt fate. And in truth, since it is only early August, the bulk of seasonal activity definitely lies ahead of us. But all indications are we can look forward to a quiet season.

Why this season should be below normal

Why? First, there's the start. By the metric of "accumulated cyclone energy," a good measurement of overall intensity and duration of tropical systems, this year's value to date is less than 30 percent of where things normally are.

Historically, the Atlantic basin has usually seen three or four named storms by now, with one of those becoming a hurricane. ...

The leading seasonal hurricane forecaster, Phil Klotzbach at Colorado State University, has steadily been revising his outlook downward. In April, he and his team predicted 13 named storms and six hurricanes this season. In his latest, and final, outlook issued Wednesday, he is predicting nine named storms and four hurricanes. He expects the season's accumulated cyclone energy to only be about 40 percent of normal levels.

This would be a well-below-normal season, and certainly a welcome one for coastal residents in the United States from South Texas to Florida to Maine. ...

There's always a catch

Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist who writes at The Climate Brink newsletter, wrote a few weeks ago about emerging data that indicates it is possible this year's El Nio will be off the charts.

"The multi-model median for the event's peak currently stands at 3.6C, roughly 0.8C hotter than the prior record of 2.75C set in 2015-16," he said. "For context, the gap between the strongest and the fifth strongest El Nio of the past 150 years is only about 0.5C. The models are forecasting something outside the envelope of anything we have ever observed." ...