| 2010 hurricane season 164% above average |
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With one month left in an extremely active hurricane season, Hurricane Tomas is forecast to head toward the Turks and Caicos Islands over the weekend, but it’s still too far away to know how close he’ll come. 
The 21st named storm of the season plowed through the Lesser Antilles on Oct. 30 with 90-95 mph winds, killing at least 14 people on the hardest hit island of St. Lucia. Other affected islands of Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines are still cleaning up damage caused by the then Category 1 storm. On Friday, Nov. 6, Tomas was expected to approach the TCI. So far this season, overall tropical cyclone activity to date is about 164 percent of the long-term (1944-2009) median. Luckily, only Hurricane Earl came close on Aug. 31, missing the TCI by a few hundred miles and delivering 30 mph-plus winds to some islands. October was an extremely active month for full-fledged hurricanes — all five storms developed into hurricanes, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami. Last month’s five named storms was far above the long-term averages of two tropical storms and one hurricane, and just one below the record of six named storms in October 1870. Not only were their many more hurricanes than average, the accumulated cyclone energy, which measures the combined strength and duration of tropical storms and hurricanes, was about 40 percent above average in October. September was busiest by far this year with four hurricanes forming from a total of eight named storms. The hurricane season ends Nov. 30.
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