Hurricane Year Mild in Gulf, Wild Up North

CORAL GABLES, Fla. — The 1991 Atlantic hurricane season that officially ended Saturday was unusually mild, but don’t tell that to New Englanders.

Florida, the Gulf Coast and the Caribbean islands escaped the five-month season pretty much unscathed, said Bob Sheets, director of the National Hurricane Center in this Miami suburb.

But the same wasn’t true for the Northeast. Bob, the season’s first hurricane, formed near the Bahamas, skirted the Carolinas and struck land Aug. 19 near Newport, R.I.

The storm wreaked havoc on the East Coast, killing 18 people and causing more than $1.5 billion damage, Sheets said. About $1 billion in damage was recorded in Massachusetts alone.

“For the New England area, it was a big hurricane season. For the Gulf Coast, it was a very mild season. There weren’t any,” Sheets said.

Atlantic tropical storms have been reported in almost every month, but the season when they are most likely runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.

This year, the season produced eight tropical storms, four of which grew into hurricanes.

The four included a hurricane early this month that, in an unusual step, was little-publicized and not named by the National Hurricane Center.

In comparison, the 1990 season produced 14 named storms, eight of them hurricanes, and at least 120 people died.