After 2005’s record hurricane season, Caribbean, Gulf Coast, and East Coast residents braced for more destruction in 2006, but the devastating storms never came. Although 2005 had witnessed 12 tropical storms and 15 hurricanes—five of which made landfall—2006 saw only four tropical storms and five hurricanes. No hurricanes made landfall in the United States in 2006.William Lau of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and Kyu-Myong Kim of University of Maryland-Baltimore County, think the answer comes from the Sahara, namely dust. The dust could have caused the widespread cooling of the subtropical North Atlantic Ocean, subduing hurricanes. The researchers don’t yet know how great a part dust played in derailing hurricane formation in 2006, but they hope their work will fuel more studies.

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