Hurricane seasons ends, but Irene's effects remain

MIAMI – The 2011 Atlantic hurricane season was a study in contradictions: It spared the usual Southern targets, while Irene paralyzed the Eastern seaboard and devastated parts of the Northeast with deadly flooding.

The season ended Wednesday as the sixth straight year without U.S. landfall of a major hurricane, yet Irene was one of the costliest storms in U.S. history and killed at least 47 people here and at least eight more in the Caribbean and Canada.

Irene was not considered a major hurricane because it did not have winds exceeding 111 mph, or Category 3, when it made landfall in North Carolina on Aug. 27.

"You would think the impacts would be somewhat light, but the damages caused by Irene will be up there in one of the top 30 or so storms," National Hurricane Center Director Bill Read said.

The season produced the third-highest number of tropical storms on record, with 19, but only a slightly higher-than-average number of hurricanes, with six.

Read said low-pressure systems on the East Coast and high-pressure systems over the central U.S. created favorable steering currents that kept the storms mostly churning far out to sea.

Storms won't move into high pressure, clearing the way for an easy storm season for the U.S. Gulf Coast. An exception was Tropical Storm Lee, which formed off the Louisiana coast and drenched much of the eastern U.S.

"It was another very odd year," said Jeff Masters, Weather Underground's director of meteorology.

The rare combination of near-record ocean temperatures but unusually dry, stable air over the Atlantic was partially responsible for the unusually high count of named storms, Masters said.

Hurricane Ophelia was the strongest storm of the season, at one point strengthening to a Category 4 with 140 mph winds when it was just northeast of Bermuda. Ophelia hit southeastern Newfoundland, Canada, as a tropical storm, but caused little damage.

The last major hurricane to hit the U.S. was Wilma, which cut an unusually large swath of damage across Florida in 2005.

Irene caught many New England residents by surprise in late August, following a rare path as it brushed up the Eastern Seaboard from North Carolina, across the Mid-Atlantic and near New York City, where meteorologists said they couldn't ever recall a direct hurricane hit.

Diamond stud earrings

Read more