Gaia shows even more contempt for the Al Gore crowd

Remember after Katrina how we were nagged warned that this was only the beginning? About how we would see a huge increase in the number and severity of such storms? So, how accurate were the Chicken Littles ??

Uh, not so much.

Thanks to El Nino, the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season has been the quietest in more than a decade, offering a reprieve for residents in the danger zone and a chance for insurance firms to refill depleted coffers.

With the peak of the season -- late August to mid-October -- now behind, the Atlantic-Caribbean basin has seen just two hurricanes and a total of eight tropical storms.
.......

If the full season, which runs from June through November, ended today, it would be the lowest number of storms since 1997. The last time an Atlantic season produced only two hurricanes was 1982.
.......

"There was for all intents and purposes no hurricane damage in the United States this year," Robert Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute, told Reuters.

"It's something that will help the insurance industry create very favorable earnings comparisons in the third quarter compared to the third quarter of last year," he said.

Forecasters saw nothing on the horizon on Wednesday.