Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

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The 2006 Atlantic tropical season so far has been the "Alberto and Ernesto Show."

These two tropical storms, which followed similar paths 2 ½ months apart, have exemplified much of what has signified the tropical season.

Alberto and Ernesto each fought wind shear and dry air aloft, struggling to develop. Alberto fell just short of becoming a hurricane at its strongest point, while Ernesto only barely and briefly reached hurricane status, far away from U.S. shores.

Each storm was prevented entry into the wide, warm expanses of the central and western Gulf of Mexico by the jet stream, the fast-moving river of air high in the atmosphere, dipping southward. In each case, the jet-stream dip, commonly called a trough, deflected the storm eastward across Florida and then into the southeastern United States, dumping widespread heavy rain.

Tropical Storm Beryl, which formed off the East Coast, was similarly deflected, only grazing Cape Cod. Florence, which is likely to become the strongest hurricane so far this season in the Atlantic near Bermuda, will probably also be bounced away from the United States by a dipping jet-stream trough.

We are now about two weeks away from the historical peak of Atlantic hurricane season. While there are still several weeks in which it will be possible for a significant hurricane to develop and hit the U.S., I feel very safe in saying at this point that the 2006 season will not be a sequel to the repetitively devastating 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons.

There is even a reasonably good chance, I'd guess 1 in 3, that the U.S. will not experience a hurricane landfall this season, which ends Nov. 30. The last year no hurricanes hit the U.S was 2001.

Large amounts of dry air blowing west off Africa have choked opportunities for disturbances to form in the open waters of the Atlantic. Increasingly warm ocean currents in the Pacific and more widespread storminess there have continued to steal energy from the Atlantic and fan upper-level winds that have sheared apart would-be hurricanes.

Instead, we've had struggling tropical storms such as Alberto and Ernesto, and even complete fizzlers such as Chris and Debby that never got close to their feared potential.

Sure, Ernesto was troublesome for many, particularly in the eastern Carolinas and eastern Virginia, but on the scale of what the nation has seen the past two years, it won't be remembered long. For our part of Virginia, Ernesto just delivered some needed rain to relieve dry conditions on the verge of outright drought.

This is no time to take our eyes off the Atlantic, for the next legendary hurricane could at any time be a few days away. Remember how quickly Katrina formed last year east of Florida and then marched into infamy? It just takes one mediocre tropical wave to find a small pocket of favorable conditions for a few days in order for a monster to develop.

But those pockets of favorable conditions are much fewer and farther between in the Atlantic than they have been in several years. And as time goes along, it becomes more apparent that we may have a fall dominated by occasional jet-stream dips from Canada rather than by steamy swirls from the tropics.

Though we may yet have another scrape with something along the lines of Alberto or Ernesto, or perhaps even something a bit more potent, we could only be a few weeks away from talking about frost or snow flurries instead.