The six-month long Atlantic Hurricane Season ends today.

Residents of Louisiana will remember the season for Hurricane Isaac which struck in late August and produced extensive flooding in areas where it had never been seen before, including LaPlace and areas on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain.  The flooding was blamed largely on the slow pace of the storm.  Isaac also knocked out electrical service to thousands of customers in the metro New Orleans area and raised questions about the preparedness of utility companies.

In the northeast United States, the season will be remembered for Hurricane Sandy which, as a post-tropical storm, caused extensive damage along the New Jersey coast and flooded the New York City subway system.

For the third hurricane season in a row, there were 19 named storms this year.  10 of those became hurricanes, but only one was a "major" hurricane.  The "average" season produces 12 named storms.

Several storms largely went unnoticed this year because they were of short duration and remained in the Atlantic posing threats only to mariners.

The season got off to an early start in May with tropical storms Alberto and Beryl.

Phil Klotzbach, research scientist for the department of atmospheric sciences at Colorado State University told us, "From a major hurricane perspective this year was very quiet, so it is highly unusual to have that many named storms combined with the few major hurricanes we observed this year."

Klotzbach believes there would have been more activity if it were not for the subsiding dry air in the tropics this storm season.

"At this point it is hard to say what next summer will bring, whether or not we are going to have an El Nino this year, so we will be looking at that closely a lot more as we approach the 2013 hurricane season.