Hurricane season ends without a scratch

The Atlantic hurricane season ended Monday with barely a whimper: Not a single hurricane came ashore in the United States.

Since June, when the season began, just nine named storms developed. Only three of them became hurricanes, and those stayed out at sea or weakened before passing over land.

Two tropical storms made landfall in the U.S., causing little more than rain and some beach erosion.

"This was a very quiet year for us," said Frank Alsheimer, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Charleston. "We had no tropical storm or hurricane watches or warnings this year. Even Ida, by the time it got up here, was no longer a tropical system."

Tropical Storm Ida, which arrived in November, and Hurricane Bill, which passed the East Coast in August, did little more than stir up the waves to the delight of local surfers.

Alsheimer attributed the quiet season to El Niño conditions that caused exceptionally warm sea surface temperatures, which increased the amount of wind shear -- or wind speed -- in the upper atmosphere, hindering tropical storm development, Alsheimer said.

A strong Bermuda high pressure area over the western Atlantic Ocean also is needed for tropical storms to reach the southeastern U.S., Alsheimer said.

"This was weak this year, as well," he said, "so that allowed the few storms that did form to turn north before they reached South Carolina and Georgia."

Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette staff writer Cassie Foss and The Associated Press contributed to this report.