Lots of experts are weighing in as the Atlantic hurricane season comes to an end (today). One of my favorites, Jeff Masters, summarizes it this way:

The Atlantic hurricane season of 2007 is over, and it was a strange one. For the second straight year, we had a near average season, despite pre-season predictions of a very active season.

Before going further, I should point out that hurricane forecasting experts tend to be on the wild side. The dean of forecasters, Bill Gray, has become a cranky global warming denier — you can read his detailed explanation of the 2007 season here. Masters, on the other hand, flew into hurricanes, of his own free will, for four years (!), sans parachutes (!!), until he was nearly killed flying into Hurricane Hugo, in “the most harrowing flight ever conducted by the NOAA hurricane hunters”.

On the more normal side, Chris Mooney, science writer and author of a good recent book on hurricanes and global warming, has his post mortem here.

Now the 2007 season did set a lot of records, as Masters notes: