Hurricane season 2007 is near the record low of 1977

Florida State University’s COAPS (Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies) says that hurricane season 2007, which ends November 30th, is looking well below normal, in fact they are calling it “historic inactivity”.

According to COAPS: “Unless a dramatic and perhaps historical flurry of activity occurs in the next 11 weeks (ACE is based on calendar year, not traditional June-November hurricane season) , 2007 will rank as a historically inactive Tropical Cyclone year for the entire Northern Hemisphere. During the past 30 years, only 1977, 1981, and 1983 have had less activity to date (Jan-December). For the period of June 1 - October 19, 2007, only 1977 experienced LESS tropical cyclone activity.”

ACE Departure from Climatology thru October 24th, 2007

Northern Hemisphere  -31% **** 316 (45 (Historic inactivity, 16% of season to go)
North Atlantic  -28% **** 63 (87) (Bill Gray wants 4 more (huh?, Season 91% over)
Eastern Pacific  -59% **** 52.2 (12 (Kiko helping out a little, Season 95% over)
Western Pacific  -25% **** 179 (237) (Still 21% of yearly activity to go)

PDI Departure from Climatology thru October 24th 2007
(PDI = Power Dissipation Index)

Northern Hemisphere  -24% **** 29687 (39101)
North Atlantic  -8% **** 6533 (7095) Effects of the Category 5’s
Eastern Pacific  -63% **** 3875 (10510) Includes Kiko
Western Pacific  -18.3% **** 17189 (21037) Includes Kajiki

Here are the named storms so far and their PDI:

Andrea 2.3 (Subtropical)
Barry 3.4
Chantal 2.5
Dean 386
Erin 1.3 (weak weak weak)
Felix 215
Gabrielle 4.0
Humberto 8.2
Ingrid 2.8
Jerry 2.4
Karen 17.2
Lorenzo 6.7
Melissa 1.9

There are some caveats:
Climatology based upon ACE (Bell et al. 2000) from 1970-2006 for each basin. ACE is not a perfect metric and does not account for storm size. Northern Hemisphere includes Northern Indian Ocean after 1976, which accounts for less than 3% of the yearly total. Data quality is a tremendous issue. The NHC declared extratropical observations were not included, which can account for up to 20% a year in additional ACE. The JTWC only started keeping track of EX phases in 2004, so there are literally 1,000 observations since the 1950s that are likely extratropical in the database (as phished out from the JMA database).