SAVANNAH, Ga. -- The hurricane season is ending with barely a whimper.
The 2009 Atlantic season officially ends Tuesday. This year produced just nine named storms, including three hurricanes. Only two tropical storms _ Claudette in August and Ida in November _ made landfall in the U.S. Those tropical storms brought heavy rain and some flooding but caused little destruction.
This was the quietest hurricane season since 2006, when none of the nine storms hit the U.S. coast. The calmest season before that was in 1997, which had just seven storms.
James Franklin of the National Hurricane Center says El Nino (NEEN-yo) conditions in the Pacific Ocean helped produce strong winds that disrupted storms in the Atlantic before they could strengthen into hurricanes.
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