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2014 hurricane season ends in line with quiet forecast

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The 2014 hurricane season ended Nov. 30 in line with forecasts for a quiet season, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

This year's hurricane season had eight named storms, six of which were hurricanes and two of which were major hurricanes, according to NOAA. One made U.S. landfall on the East Coast.

That compares with long-term seasonal averages of six hurricanes and two to three major hurricanes, said Gerry Bell, lead hurricane forecaster at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

“A relatively quiet season is exactly what we saw,” Mr. Bell said.

The U.S hurricane season is closely watched by the insurance and reinsurance sectors.

Roughly 50% of global insured catastrophe risk is in the United States, said Karen Clark, president and CEO of Boston-based catastrophe modeling firm Karen Clark & Co. The East Coast alone accounts for about 25% of total global insured catastrophe loss potential, she said.

While the U.S saw a quiet storm season, the story was quite different elsewhere.

In the eastern Pacific storm basin, there were 22 named storms and six Category 4 storms, or those with sustained winds of 130-156 mph on the Saffir-Simpson scale, said Tom Larsen, the chief product architect at CoreLogic-Eqecat in Oakland, California.

The region also saw its highest accumulated cyclonic energy, a measure of storm intensity, since 1971, Mr. Larsen said.

Insured losses for the year were still being calculated, officials said.