Every year why is it so hard to find one answer to one simple hurricane question:

How many hurricanes so far this year? 

Question.

How many hurricanes formed so far in the current season (as of November 9, 2009)?

Answer.  

2 (two) or 3 (three) depending on who you ask.

Here's a hurricane website link that answers the specific question.  Feel free to add other plain-talking links that answer this specific question.

http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/hurrarchive.asp

On the right side of webpage look for "Hurricane Archive All Atlantic Storms".

Click the box "Select an archive year to view:" and select the current year.

Hurricanes will have names like "Hurricane Fred" or "Hurricane Ida".

The 2009 hurricane season appears to be on a cycle that produces low numbers of hurricanes. Hurricanes seem to cycle between low numbers and high numbers. More specifically, they cycle between periods of similar hurricane numbers and periods of dissimilar hurricane numbers. I updated and reposted my 2009 hurricane forecast on July 23, 2009. I first posted my forecast of the 2009 hurricane season on May 26, 2006.

The bottommost picture chart shows evidence of cycling.

Hurricane Tracking -- My Way

My research produced the green-colored hurricane tracking curve (see bottommost picture chart below). Because my forecast tracking curve forms a peak in year 2005, I can forecast that the years 2006 through about 2010 will produce dissimilar hurricane numbers and will more likely produce very low hurricane numbers for at least one season.

A “peak” in my hurricane forecasting tracking curve always means 4 to 5 years of dissimilar hurricane numbers. Dissimilar means if many hurricanes show up one year then very few hurricanes show up the next year, and visa versa. So, a peak signals a 5-year rollercoaster ride of gut wrenching then relaxing, soaring highs then deep lows. In summary, since a peak in the green-colored curve forms in the year 2005, then I expect at least one year to show very low hurricane numbers. It seems a low hurricane year is 2009.

Hurricanes and Year 2012 Mayan Prophecy: A statistical link?

Am I claiming that Mother Nature will “cane” us into extinction in 2012?

Well … annual hurricane weather data suggest that the number of hurricanes in years 2010 or 2011 predicts the hurricanes in year 2012. For instance, in year 2010 my green‑colored hurricane forecast curve forms a valley (see bottommost picture chart below). Valleys always mean similar numbers follow, each year, for about 5 years.

So, if the year 2010 or 2011 in fact produces 7 or more hurricanes then I’ll gird up my loins and head for the hills because the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico region will give us exceedingly high hurricane numbers—between 7 and 9 hurricanes—each season until the year 2015. 

7 or more hurricanes within one year are the highest numbers as hurricanes go.     

The good news is if only 3 hurricanes get produced in 2010 or 2011 statistically speaking similar low numbers will follow year after year through the year 2015.  The other good news is in the past 155 years, the Atlantic/Gulf region endured only 2 seasons with 12 or more hurricanes. The last voluminous year was the 2005 season which eventually produced 13 hurricanes (including Hurricane Katrina which crossed Louisiana, USA).

Which hurricane cycle will commence in the year 2012 cannot be known with certainty.

But isn't it interesting that the Mayan Calendar runs out only one month after the end of hurricane season of 2012?

"I could report to you that the conflict is almost over. This I cannot do. We face more cost, more loss, and more agony. For the end is not yet." 
L. B. J., 1967.