A satellite image of Beryl approaching land on the Texas coast in the Gulf of Mexico taken by NOAA’s GOES-16 satellite at 11:56 P.M. (EDT) on July 7, 2024. Photo: NOAA
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) delivered a lofty forecast back in May for this year’s Atlantic hurricane season. The gist was pretty simple: expect an “above normal” hurricane season. That translated to predicting 17 to 25 total named storms, between eight to 13 of those becoming hurricanes, and four to seven major hurricanes during the June 1 to November 30 window. Now more than two months into the current hurricane season, the administration updated its predictions Thursday.
Not much has changed from NOAA’s May forecast. With just four named storms crossed off the list, forecasters still believe the end-of-season tallies will fall in the range of their original predictions. As of Thursday, they “updated the number of expected named storms to 17-24 (with winds of 39 mph or greater), of which 8-13 could become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or greater), including 4-7 major hurricanes (winds of 111 mph or greater).”
“The hurricane season got off to an early and violent start with Hurricane Beryl, the earliest category-5 Atlantic hurricane on record,” said NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, Ph.D. “NOAA’s update to the hurricane seasonal outlook is an important reminder that the peak of hurricane season is right around the corner, when historically the most significant impacts from hurricanes and tropical storms tend to occur.”
While the overall storm counts may not seem wildly different from the late-May predictions, one notable change is the confidence forecasters have in their outlook. All of those “above normal” predictions in May were backed by 70 percent confidence in NOAA’s ranges. The recent forecast is now backed by a 90 percent probability. They say the leading factors driving higher activity than usual are warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea, reduced vertical wind shear, weaker tropical Atlantic trade winds, and an enhanced West African monsoon. They say all of those conditions are expected to last through the Northern Hemisphere fall.
Forecasters also pointed out that their predictions don’t necessarily mean we will see all the impacts on land. The existence of tropical storms doesn’t equate to storms that make landfall.
“Landfalls are largely determined by short-term weather patterns, which are only predictable within about a week of a storm potentially reaching a coastline,” they explained.
