First, a bit of catching up: I was on vacation last week and didn't write anything about Hurricane Julia which formed near Aruba, tracked west and developed into a hurricane as it made landfall in central Nicaragua, and then had a complicated evolution over Central America.
Like Bonnie back in early July, Julia made landfall in Nicaragua and traversed the country intact, maintaining its identity as a tropical storm in the East Pacific. Julia made another landfall in El Salvador then dissipated over Guatemala, but a part of the circulation split off to the west and is an area of potential development (Invest 99E) in the East Pacific while another part split off to the north and became Tropical Storm Karl on Tuesday afternoon.
The map above shows an infrared satellite image from Wednesday morning, but I superimposed the tracks of Hurricane Julia, Tropical Storm Karl, and Invest 99E for reference to illustrate the interesting split that Julia's remnants experienced.
Julia was the season's 10th named storm and 5th hurricane, so Karl is the season's 11th named storm -- it is not expected to reach hurricane intensity as it drifts back south into the Veracruz area of Mexico over the next couple days. The greatest threat is heavy rain resulting in flooding and mudslides.
The season's storm tally as of October 12 is at 11 named storms, 5 hurricanes, and 2 major hurricanes (Category 3+). This table shows the average dates by which these milestones occur... you can see that by now, an average season would have 12 named storms, 5 hurricanes, and 2 major hurricanes, so 2022 is really close to those marks.
We can also look at the season's activity in terms of Accumulated Cyclone Energy, or ACE, which is a metric that doesn't depend on the number of storms, but on the overall intensity and duration of whatever storms there are. By this metric and the same baseline as before (1991-2020), the season is only 79% of average for the date.
Elsewhere, the Atlantic basin is quiet with no activity in the foreseeable future.
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