Who will be Max Mayfield’s successor at the National Hurricane Center? We’ll find out tomorrow. (Hat tip: WXNation.) The rumored front-runner is Bill Proenza, whose last name sounds like a prescription drug. (Ask your doctor if Proenza is right for you.) Margie Kieper has more:

Not only was Max Mayfield’s retirement unexpected, but things have not gone that smoothly in the search for a new director. There is speculation that the current appointment may be a short-term one. Proenza has around 40 years of service — more than the retiring Mayfield, who has 34. In the mid-sixties, Proenza worked at the NHC and with hurricane reconnaissance. And the response of someone in the field who was recently interviewed, when asked if he was a candidate for the position, was that he didn’t apply “this time,” and that he was “keeping his options open.” …

Max has so completely excelled at the position of director, in both the public and internal aspects of the job, that it is hard to imagine anyone else filling those shoes. Subsequent speculation about who could, and who would also be willing to do so, has included many candidates, some far afield, even though there is a tradition of promoting from within at NHC. And it has been kept a tight secret outside the community, as this morning’s Miami Herald was still speculating about who would be the new director. After the initial announcement [of Mayfield’s retirement] on August 25th, it became clear there was no obvious first choice, and NOAA bought time by extending the job opening for an additional month after the original closing date for applications, and suggesting that Ed Rappaport would be the heir apparent (he declined for personal reasons and the extensive amount of travel required). …

[E]veryone is sorry to see Max leave. With the potential for more active seasons looming, the idea of a change at the helm of the NHC, from such capable hands, was not welcomed. But things change. After tomorrow, the spotlight will be on the new director, who will have almost six months to become a trusted presence on the national scene before next year’s Atlantic hurricane season.

On a related note… what with all the football madness, Daily Trojan kerfuffles and other stuff going on last week, I failed to make note of the official end of the 2006 hurricane season last Thursday. In fact, the last two hurricane-related posts on my blog were by Jay Johnson and Briandot. I haven’t blogged about hurricanes since October 1!

There’s a reason for that, of course. It was, as it turns out, a rather anticlimactic year in the tropical Atlantic, especially after all the hair-on-fire warnings of a hyperactive season with hurricanes hitting the East Coast. There were, in the end, nine tropical storms, five hurricanes, and two major hurricanes — making for a slightly below-average season, in stark contrast to all the forecasts of a significantly above-average season. (Hat tip: Andrew Leyden.) Then again, we shouldn’t be too stunned that the forecasts were wrong; after all, it’s not like they correctly predicted 28 storms in 2005 right, either! Long-range forecasts are notoriously shaky, and the media really paid way too much attention to them this year.

Anyway, my politically minded readers will doubtless ask, what does this tell us about global warming? Answer: Precisely nothing. Just as those people who said that the 2005 season clearly proves that OMG OMG EVERY SINGLE SEASON WILL BE LIKE THIS FROM NOW ON BECAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING, AAAAHHH!!! were idiots, likewise those who now claim that the relatively inactive 2006 season disproves global warming are also idiots. Climate change is measured over decades and centuries, not individual years (let alone individual storms). The larger point is that, whether because of global warming or not, it’s clear that we are in a generally active hurricane cycle right now — but even active cycles have inactive years, and this was one of those, thanks in part to El Niño. Thank goodness. Coastal residents should count their blessings and then make sure they’re prepared for next year, because it won’t always be like 2006. The peace and quiet this year is no reason to become complacent.

It’s not “peace and quiet” everywhere, by the way. In the Philippines, the death toll from Typhoon Durian is well over a thousand, making it the worst tropical cyclone of 2006 anywhere in the world.