Headlines
- NOAA has unveiled their prediction for the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, and to no one’s surprise, it’s active.
- They predict an 85 percent chance of an above normal season with 17 to 25 named storms and 8 to 13 hurricanes.
- There’s a Caribbean disturbance that is headed out to sea, unlikely to develop, and we may have another one there in about 10 days or so.
First off, apologies for the gap between posts, though it’s not as if anything has been going on in the tropics of late. The derecho event here in Houston has monopolized most of my time and resources, and while we were thankfully ok at my location, many others in Houston are not. Here’s to yet another recovery for this city. So on that happy note, let’s discuss hurricane season again.
NOAA’s seasonal hurricane forecast is big
NOAA has unveiled their seasonal hurricane outlook today, and it’s a doozy (Editor’s note: I used the same intro for the Colorado State hurricane outlook last month). First, the numbers.
- An 85 percent chance of an above normal season
- 17 to 25 named storms
- 8 to 13 hurricanes
- 4 to 7 major hurricanes
- Accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) 150 to 245% of the median
In other words, busy.
There are a number of factors involved in this: We are transitioning into a La Niña event in the Pacific, we are in a background state of above normal tropical activity that likely began in 1995, and sea surface temperatures in much of the tropical Atlantic are at record levels and are running near late August averages. That isn’t a typo. Dr. Kim Wood at the University of Arizona and Michael Lowry in South Florida have been two of many prominent voices sounding the alarm on this for months now.
Wood has sea-surface temperature maps for various sub-basins of the Atlantic, and while the Gulf of Mexico is only running about 2 to 3 weeks ahead of schedule, the basin overall is running near August levels. The Caribbean? That’s even worse, running *above* peak average sea-surface temperatures for the entire year. Already.
We can hope for a 2010-like outcome, where it was a busy season but most storms avoided land (with a couple notably tragic exceptions). But given these sorts of antecedent conditions coming into the season, this would be a favorable outcome.
The NOAA outlook, combined with virtually every other hurricane season outlook is saying this year will be busy. It may or may not be busy for you, but we are getting to the point where there aren’t a whole lot of ways to describe any of this that in non-hyperbole. The bottom line is that this is the year to be prepared if you live anywhere on the coast. Just in case.
Watching the Caribbean, sort of
And with that, we have a disturbance to keep tabs on in the Caribbean already.
Looking at satellite, there’s not a whole heck of a lot to this one. There’s definitely a “center” of the disturbance near the eastern tip of Cuba, but it’s on the way east and northeast. So it will be out in the open water before too long.
Ten percent seems like reasonable odds for development at this point, but no impacts of note are expected even if it does form.
Otherwise, things look quiet for another week or so. We may have another disturbance to watch in the Caribbean in about 10 days or so. We’ll keep you posted on that.