Ocean-goers in Nova Scotia were met with warm waves when they crashed into the surf at Lawrencetown Beach on Tuesday.
It made an already warm October day that much more enjoyable for Meaghan Boyd, a boogie boarder who was enjoying the swells.
“The water’s really warm, I’ve never swam in water this warm,” she said.
Boyd was one of the dozens of people who flocked to the Atlantic coastline Tuesday morning, to embrace “higher than normal” water temperatures that meteorologists have noticed for this time of year.
“Right now, it looks like we’re probably a couple degrees above normal for sea surface temperatures around Atlantic Canada and the Maritimes. Now, that tends to fluctuate over the course of several weeks,” said Ian Hubbard, an Environment Canada meteorologist based out of the Atlantic Hurricane Centre in Dartmouth.
While Hubbard says the high swell levels weren’t connected to any “particular storm” on Tuesday, the Atlantic hurricane season overall has been “more active than usual.”
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“We’ve been above normal, climatologically speaking, in terms of the number of storms we’ve had, number of named storms, number of hurricanes and the number of major hurricanes,” he said.
Hubbard adds there are two main factors suspected to be behind the active season.
“The sea surface temperatures have been slightly above normal. So overall throughout the course of the season, about a half a degree, to one degree Celsius warmer than normal and that contributes to the energy of the storm when it’s developing,” he said.
Hubbard adds that decreased wind shear in the atmosphere has also contributed to increased hurricanes.
“The amount of shear in the atmosphere, which tends to inhibit formation over the tropics. For August and September, both of those were very favourable conditions, which is why we saw a lot of development, a lot of activity,” Hubbard said.
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The latest hurricane to cause land damage is Hurricane Nate, putting 2017 on the map for multiple storms that have turned into hurricanes.
“We’ve had nine consecutive named storms that have turned into hurricanes, dating back to the summer and with the forecast for Ophelia, that could make 10 if it reaches hurricane strength as it is currently forecast,” he said.
The Atlantic hurricane season officially runs until the end of November.