The 2009 Atlantic hurricane season is closing with the fewest named storms and hurricanes since 1997. Many people, including meteorologists, agree the season was very quiet despite actually appearing average statistic wise, with nine named storms including three hurricanes, two of which were major.

"It's a little deceptive because we had nine named storms, but in reality, that's pretty close to where we should be. But the strength of the storms and the duration of those storms that is what the issue was this year, we just didn't see an intense hurricane season,” said Newschannel 7’s Chief Meteorologist, Chris Smith.

This lack of intensity is due in part to El Nino.

“What El Nino does, is it changes the wind flow, the upper level wind flow in the atmosphere. When it changes that, basically it makes it less favorable for these tropical systems to develop, sustain themselves, and even strengthen in the long term,” said Smith.

This hurricane season got off to a late start with no named storms in either June or July.

Ana lead off the season forming August 15th. But only two weak tropical storms actually made landfall - Claudette in August and Ida in November.

However it doesn't take a storm to have a name to be destructive.

"Just because the hurricane season is over doesn't mean its time to put away the NOAA weather radio or things like that. We're going to have severe weather this week we were told this morning. So it's very important that people keep in mind the kind of things we ask them to do during hurricane season; it's a good idea to do those things all year long,” said EOC Director, Mark Bowen.

You may need to break out some of those supplies this week as a non-tropical system with tropical-like characteristics heads our way.

"Possibly high surf, a bit of a storm surge, very heavy rainfall and very gusty winds. Pretty similar to what a hurricane does. We’re going to watch as it develops throughout the day Tuesday into early Wednesday morning as it approaches the panhandle,” said Chief Meteorologist Chris Smith.

"It only takes a very little margin of error for us to be affected by one of these storms. My job is to ask people to be prepared and I’m going to do that all year long,” said Bowen.

Hurricane forecasters were actually on target for the 2009 season predicting below-average activity. Their first predictions for 2010 are due out December 9th.