The 2007 Atlantic hurricane season was an active Atlantic hurricane season that produced 17 tropical cyclones, 15 tropical storms, six hurricanes, and two major hurricanes. It officially started on June 1 and ended on November 30, dates which conventionally delimit the period during which most tropical cyclones form in the Atlantic Ocean. The first tropical cyclone, Subtropical Storm Andrea, developed on May 9, while the last storm, Tropical Storm Olga, dissipated on December 13. The most intense hurricane, Dean, is tied for the seventh most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded as well as the third most intense Atlantic hurricane at landfall. The season was one of only four on record for the Atlantic with more than one Category 5 storm. It was the second on record in which an Atlantic hurricane, Felix, and an eastern Pacific hurricane, Henriette, made landfall on the same day. September had a record-tying eight storms, although the strengths and durations of most of the storms were low. Aside from hurricanes Dean and Felix, none of the storms in the season exceeded Category 1 intensity.
Pre-season forecasts by the Colorado State University (CSU) called for 14 named storms and 7 hurricanes, of which three were expected to attain major hurricane status. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) later issued its initial forecast, which predicted 13 to 17 named storms, 7 to 10 hurricanes and three to five major hurricanes. After several revisions in the projected number of storms, NOAA and CSU lowered their forecasts by the middle of the season.
Several storms made landfall or directly affected land. Hurricanes Dean and Felix made landfall at Category 5 intensity, causing severe damage in parts of Mexico and Central America, respectively. Both storm names, as well as Noel, the name of a hurricane that affected the Caribbean, were retired from the naming list of Atlantic hurricanes. The United States was affected by five cyclones, although the storms were generally weak; three tropical depressions and only one tropical storm, Gabrielle, and one hurricane, Humberto, made landfall in the country. Elsewhere, three storms directly affected Canada, although none severely. The combined storms killed at least 423 people and caused about $3 billion (2007 USD, $3.36 billion 2012 USD) in damage.
Read more about 2007 Atlantic Hurricane Season: Seasonal Forecasts, Season Activity, Storms, Impact, Records and Statistics, Storm Names, Season Effects
Famous quotes containing the words atlantic, hurricane and/or season:
“There was not a tree as far as we could see, and that was many miles each way, the general level of the upland being about the same everywhere. Even from the Atlantic side we overlooked the Bay, and saw to Manomet Point in Plymouth, and better from that side because it was the highest.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Staid middle age loves the hurricane passions of opera.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The instincts of merry England lingered on here with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on Egdon. Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan still: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic gaieties, fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names are forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval doctrine.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)