As the sun rises on this last day of November 2021 residents along the Gulf South are breathing a collective sigh of relief as yet another hurricane season fades into the history books. Okay, fade is probably not what is going to happen to anyone who was impacted by Hurricane Ida earlier this year but for a large portion of the United States coastline, there are prayers of thanks being lifted toward the heavens today.

From the National Hurricane Center as of early this morning:

nhc.noaa.gov
nhc.noaa.gov
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The Atlantic Hurricane Season runs from June 1st through November 30th. Hurricane forecasters had warned us that this year would offer yet another very busy hurricane season and hurricane season 2021 lived up to the billing. The video below shows exactly how the season unfolded.

The season will be remembered as being the third busiest season on record. Only last year's 30 named storms and 2005's 28 named storms top this year's 21 named storms. The 2021 hurricane season breaks down this way. There were 21 named storms in total. Of those named storms seven reached hurricane strength. Of those seven hurricanes four of those reached major hurricane status.

National Hurricane Center
National Hurricane Center
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Of course, the hurricane that Louisiana will remember from 2021 is Hurricane Ida. While the devastation from Ida was immense there was a bit of a silver lining to that storm. Ida's landfall in southeastern Louisiana was a major test for revamped New Orleans levee system. The good news is that system appears to have passed the test.

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
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The bad news is that communities Grand Isle, Port Fourchon, Lafitte, Laplace, Braveway, and Houma all took a pretty good wallop from Ida. In fact, many residents are still picking up the pieces from the storm and struggling to return their lives to normal.

Now Ida wasn't the only storm to impact the state, there was also Hurricane Nicholas. That storm made landfall in Texas but meandered into Louisiana as a rainmaker for several days in September. Do y'all remember the funny story of Galveston Police arresting a man dressed as serial killer Michael Myers on the beach?

Meanwhile, in June the southeastern portion of the state was impacted by Tropical Storm Claudette. The very weak tropical system was actually upgraded to tropical storm status while over land in Louisiana.

cdn.star.nesdis.noaa gov
cdn.star.nesdis.noaa gov
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While we say the impacts of Claudette were minimal compared to Ida, there was still $350 million dollars in damages done by that storm. Regardless, I think most of us would take three landfalling tropical systems over five landfalling tropical systems that we experienced in Louisiana in 2020.

So, what have we learned?

Well, for two hurricane seasons in a row there have been more than 21 or more named tropical systems. For the second hurricane season in a row, Louisiana has been impacted by multiple named tropical systems. Is this just a coincidence? A freak of nature? or even more frightening, a trend? We will just have to wait and see.

Liu Hsuan Yu via Unsplash.com
Liu Hsuan Yu via Unsplash.com
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We can expect preseason hurricane forecasts to start rolling out early next year with official prognostications coming later in the spring. Let's hope this will be instead of an El Nino or La Nina year, maybe we'll have El Nunofyou kind of year. Yeah, I just made that up, but I do hope it comes true.

How about we wrap up this Hurricane Season with a lesson we learned from Noah and the Ark, after the storm, look for the rainbows.

25 Rainbows From Around Acadiana

 

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