Based on the numbers, this has been a relatively active year in the tropical Atlantic. Though few storms have threatened the U.S, there have been some strong hurricanes. For example, Hurricane Iris slammed into the central American country of Belize on October 8 with 140-mph winds, leaving 13,000 people homeless and destroying most of the country's banana crop.

Iris continued westward across Guatamala, weakening to a tropical depression before dissipating over the mountains of southern Mexico. However, the weak circulation left over from Iris crossed into the eastern Pacific Ocean, where it served as the embryo for a new tropical storm. That storm was called Manuel, which was the next name on the list used for eastern Pacific storms. That's a different list than the one used for Atlantic storms.

I thought this kind of tropical trickery was worthy of a Halloween Franklin Fact, since it really was the ghost of Hurricane Iris that helped to generate a totally new tropical system in a different ocean.