By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

SAHARA dust is the reason for a quieter than predicted hurricane season so far, according to acting director of the Bahamas Department of Meteorology Jeffrey Simmons.

Mr Simmons attributed this year’s “slightly below” predictions for the Atlantic hurricane season to the high amount of Sahara dust.

The Atlantic 2024 hurricane season had been forecasted to be “explosive”, with weather forecasting company AccuWeather projecting 20 to 25 named storms, and eight to 12 hurricanes – with four to seven of those expected to be major hurricanes.

Mr Simmons said: “When you look at what we have predicted to happen this season in particular, I would say, in my opinion, that we are slightly below what we had predicted. But we are still in the peak of the season and give it another six to eight weeks and see exactly how that’s going to pan out.”

Mr Simmons explained how the Sahara dust affects the moisture. He said: “What has happened with what appears as if we did not really take into consideration, this season, going into the season was the high volume of Sahara dust in the region and what would have happened is that just Sahara dust would have dried out, taken a lot of the moisture from over the oceans.”

Mr Simmons also pointed to the after-effects of a volcanic eruption in Iceland last year, which he said is taking away moisture needed for hurricane formation.

He said: “Even though we still have the high ocean temperature and we still have the La Niña effect and all of that, you know we need moisture and that is visibly absent around our Atlantic region this year. So that could be a reason why we see the season not being as active as predicted.”

He said the latter half of the hurricane season is usually more active than the former half.

“We do expect to see some more activity picking up out there as we go through this month, next month, in particular, for the next two months at least.”