The 2006 hurricane season ended on 30th November with the number of hurricanes that qualified as "major" - category 3 or above - 50 percent below NOAA forecasts and not a single hurricane made landfall.
Hurricane Dean is the first for this 2007 season and according to Jeff Master's Wunder blog:
"Hurricane Dean has intensified into the first Category 5 storm in the Atlantic since Hurricane Wilma of 2005. The latest Hurricane Hunter fix at 8:34pm EDT found 185 mph winds at their flight level of 10,000 feet, which corresponds to surface winds of 160 mph. The pressure had dropped to 914 mb, and I expect Dean will strengthen right up until landfall. Landfall is expected near Chetumal, Mexico, just after midnight local time...
Keep reading here: http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html
Hurricane Dean has not re-intensified as predicted. The central core completely collapsed during its passage across the Yucatan penisula, and due to unfavourable wind shear in the upper levels, it is not likely to intensify signifcantly before it reaches land again.
The second landfall should be as a Cat 1 storm (with wind 60 to 80 knots) and dissipation of this system into a depression should then be fairly fast. This does not mean that the danger is over. There will be lots of rain associated - which may mean flooding, landslides and such.
The other Atlantic low pressure area has unfavourable upper-level winds to allow it to develop into a tropical storm. The latest advisory expects a quiet Atlantic and Caribbean...for now.
cheers
Arnost
You're confused as usual - it must have been a manager type or at your Nimbin Gold Collective meeting. Any sensible sciencey person knows that "tropical cyclones", originating in tropical waters, have historically impacted as far south as Byron Bay. Oh to be at the Pass then. Intense lows, cutoff lows, aka "cyclones", can occur off anywhere off the NSW coast as we have seen a number of late indeed do just that. CSIRO have modelled these things if you had been paying attention and not reading your envelope.
You may be remembering the CSIRO modelling result that found no statistically significant increase in southerly tropical cyclone trajectory in a globally warmed world. Just more intense systems. Try to get it right !