Two Sheared Storms, Zero Hurricanes; Amazon Burned Area Hits 41-Year Low; ‘Dead’ Coral Reef Found Teeming With Life; + Svensmark Sacked
Amazon burned area collapsed 80% in a single year, reaching a 41-year low.
Two Sheared Storms, Zero Hurricanes
The 2026 Atlantic hurricane season has so far produced just two named storms. Both formed in the Gulf. Both were heavily sheared and lopsided. Neither became a hurricane.
Bertha reached barely 60 mph (97 km/h) despite moving over warm water, but it is essentially half a storm. High wind shear and dry air have exposed its circulation center and shoved nearly all its thunderstorms to the south.
Without that shear, Bertha could already be a hurricane. Instead, weakening is expected before a likely tropical-storm landfall in Louisiana on Wednesday. Its future beyond Louisiana depends on how much time it spends over land. The current NHC track carries the weakened system briefly back over water before taking it into southeastern Texas as a tropical depression.
Certain computer models were considerably more dramatic.
Before Bertha had even developed a reliable center, the high-resolution GRAF model—used by television stations across the US—depicted a tightly wound cyclone with an eye approaching the Gulf Coast.
At the forecast time, the actual satellite image showed a disorganized, heavily sheared tropical storm nowhere near the modelled depiction. The GRAF model’s alarming run was ready-made for television because detailed computer-generated catastrophe sells better than uncertainty.
The Atlantic tally through July 22: two lopsided Gulf tropical storms, zero hurricanes and very high Caribbean wind shear. The real standout is accumulated cyclone energy, which currently sits 83% below the 1991–2020 average.
We can chalk Bertha up as yet another failure for the computer-generated apocalypse.
Amazon Burned Area Hits 41-Year Low
The area burned across Brazil’s Amazon collapsed to its lowest level in 41 years during 2025.
