The moisture, when available, is supplied by the Sahel and the heat by the equator and desert, but dust essential to cloud development.
And, an attenuated hurricane season is as normal as an active one.
The moisture is supplied by all that ocean between here and the west coast of Africa. The sun warms it causing evaporation.
The dust from Africa, whether from the Sahara, Sahel or fires set by farmers further south provides nuclei for the water vapor to condense around once it once it has risen to a height and begun to cool into droplets.
Saharan dust particles nucleate droplets in eastern Atlantic clouds
Quite right. I failed to show the most basic understanding of these systems, that they are dynamic phenomena, for one thing. I was thinking of the storm systems and lows stirred before they depart the African continent, and even then I was incorrect.