2005 Hurricane season ends; Do the hurricanes know that?

For the past few weeks there's been a tone of anticipation creeping into the voices of news anchors as they give the reports about the latest storms forming in the north Atlantic. They have been ending these reports with a countdown to November 30th, which is the official end of the 2005 hurricane season.

So what now? Now that the season is officially ending, what happens to any hurricanes that form in the north Atlantic? Do they get counted towards next year's tally? Or do we just pretend they're not there and hope they go away?

This sort of thing has happened before. 2004's Cyclone Catarina - a.k.a. Hurricane Catarina, not to be confused with 2005's devastating Hurricane Katrina, which caused so much devastation in the southern U.S., most famously the destruction of New Orleans - formed off the coast of southern Brazil near the Brazilian state of Catarina, in a region where no hurricane had ever been known to form before - and as such, it fell outside the normal naming conventions. And the "Perfect Storm" of 1991 , immortalized in the book and movie of the same name, similarly formed in the far north Atlantic in a region where hurricanes were not previously known to form, and also never received an official designation.

The 2005 hurricane season officially ends today. Here's hoping it ends in reality, too.