History Repeats Itself

The 2014 Atlantic Hurricane season was, for the most part, a bitter disappointment.  Only 8 named storms formed from June 1-November 30, the fewest since 1994.  All of those storms were restricted to July 1-October 28.  For those of us who enjoy the thrill of tracking hurricanes and maybe even making our own predictions, there was little to be excited about.  Of those 8, 4 had a direct impact on land, with two of those being weak tropical storms.

On the other hand, the 2014 Eastern Pacific Hurricane season was incredibly active, with the most named storms since 1992.  There were 20 named storms that formed in those waters.  However, this season had a wider active frame than 1992.  In 1992, the storms formed from June 1-October 30, whereas this season had storms form from May 22-Nov 5.  There were 9 major hurricanes in the Eastern Pacific, which is more than the Atlantic had in total named storms!

This is quite the interesting situation, so some numbers shall provided to make a point.  This table shows the number of named storms experienced each year in both the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific oceans.  From this table, not much alone can be determined

The above chart does not show much that can immediately be concluded.  This can be said, however: there are three major peaks on the Pacific graph in 1985, 1992, and 2014.  Those peaks, correspond to summers immediately following La Niña, El Niño, and El Niño events respectively.  I will leave the rest up to you, the reader, to conclude, because I do not have any concrete answers to this mystery.  1992 and 2014 are consistent with what is known about El Niño, but 1985 makes an answer into a conundrum