It's an old saw: A season can produce one hurricane that comes up your street and it's the busiest year ever. Or it can spawn 100 storms, and if none strikes you, you wonder why things were so quiet. Like 2010. This season tied for third in the number of named storms -- 19. But remarkably, for the second consecutive year, not one hurricane struck the U.S. mainland. And only Tropical Storm Bonnie struck Florida, causing minimal damage in the Miami area. 'Florida was spared again this year, but just ask the people in Mexico and Bermuda if it was a bad season and they'll say yes,' said Amy Godsey, Florida's state meteorologist. A 'chute' in the Atlantic Ocean steered many storms away from us, according to Christopher Landsea, science and operations specialist for the National Hurricane Center. A strong trough on the U.S. East Coast and a weakened Bermuda high created an alley in the central Atlantic into which one storm after another shot north before approaching the North American coast. And though Earl put a scare into the East Coast in early September, the most damaging hurricane was not a big summer monster, but the last storm of the year. Tomas became a tropical storm Oct. 29 and a hurricane the next day. It skirted Haiti but dropped torrential rains, bringing misery to thousands still in tent cities there after the catastrophic earthquake in January. Tomas left about two dozen dead and caused substantial damage. It also drenched neighboring islands. The 2010 season tied with 1887 and 1995 for the third-busiest on record. It ranks behind the 21 named storms in 1933 and the 28 in 2005, which included Wilma and Katrina. This year, 19 tropical systems earned names by becoming at least tropical storms, up from nine in 2009. Of those, 12 became hurricanes (up from three) and four were major storms (up from two). This is the first time on record, going back to the 1870s, that at least a dozen hurricanes formed and none struck the United States. Previously, in any season that at least 10 hurricanes formed, at least two had U.S. landfalls. This year also marked the first time since records have been kept that no hurricanes struck the Florida Peninsula or the U.S. East Coast in a five-year period. The high number of reported storms in recent years might more reflect improved science than reality, Landsea said. 'We are much better at identifying weak, short-lived storms than we ever were,' he said. 'We're adding two extra storms a year that even 20 years ago wouldn't have gotten names.' Other highlights this year: -- Alex was the first June hurricane in the Atlantic since 1995 and the first June Category 2 hurricane since 1966. -- Eleven named storms formed between Aug. 22 and Sept. 29. That was the most to form during this period, breaking the record of nine set in 1933, 1949, 1984 and 2002. -- Five tropical storms formed in October and all became hurricanes. That was only one fewer than the October record of six in 1870. -- For the third straight year, no hurricane reached Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with top sustained winds of at least 155 mph. Eliot Kleinberg writes for The Palm Beach Post. E-mail: eliot(underscore)kleinberg@pbpost.com. 