Safe from the Storm: How bad could this year’s hurricane season be?
By SHANE BUTLER, Action 8 Chief Meteorologist
Hurricane season starts on June 1 and runs through November 30. This year, Twenty one names are lined up and ready to go. Starting with Andrea and ending with Wendy.
The NOAA seasonal forecast is out and it’s calling for 13 to 19 named storms, with 6 to 10 hurricanes and of those, 3 to 5 major hurricanes with winds 111MPH or greater.
The Colorado State University forecast has 17 named storms, of which nine become hurricanes and four of those major.
An average season typically has 12 named storms, seven hurricanes, and three major.
Hurricane researcher Dr. Phil Klotzbach of Colorado State University tells us why he expects an above average season.
“We don’t anticipate El Niño this summer and fall. El Nino is warmer than normal water in the central and eastern tropical Pacific. When it occurs, it tends to basically increase winds high up in the atmosphere that tear apart hurricanes in the Atlantic.
“We don’t anticipate El Niño this summer and fall. The Atlantic will not thankfully be as warm as last year at this time. It’s still running somewhat warmer than normal. A warmer Atlantic provides more fuel for developing tropical storms and hurricanes, so we do still see conditions overall that look more conducive than in an average season.”
In the Atlantic basin, we’re expecting to see less wind shear to disrupt storm development, an active monsoon season over Western Africa producing more storms and above-average ocean water temperatures to aid storm development.
You may recall one of last year’s most devastating storms was Helene. It became a Category 4 just before landfall, producing coastal wind destruction but more notable was the historic rainfall dropped over a three-state region, including parts of Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee. Areas just northeast of Asheville, North Carolina, received over 30 inches of rain in just a few days. It’s a reminder that inland impacts can be significant.
“Significant storm surge, wind and flood, and then obviously when the storm moves onshore they often the weaken, but you still can get very very strong gusts as you go farther inland, but obviously you could have extreme levels of rainfall which we saw, especially Helene was a very good example of how cataclysmic rainfall can be inland. Certainly with hurricanes, we obviously focus a lot on what goes along on the coast. The coast is very important. You can still see significant impact, in addition to flooding and tornadoes.”
