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95% of seasonal hurricane activity still to come

dwright
August 9, 2023

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Hurricane risk is about to ramp up. Here are the latest forecasts for the 2023 season.

                                                                                                           Credit: NOAA

August is here, and that usually means it’s time for the Atlantic hurricane season to ramp up. With that in mind, top forecasters released updated predictions this week for the remainder of the season.

Meteorologists at Colorado State University continue to expect a total of 18 named storms will form by the time the season wraps up in November. (This includes the five that have already developed.) Of those 18 storms, nine are expected to reach hurricane strength; this includes the short-lived Hurricane Don, which spun up briefly in the open Atlantic in June.

An average season, based on data from 1991-2020, has 14 named storms, of which 7 typically become hurricanes.

 Forecasters at AccuWeather, in a prediction released Tuesday, said that 13-17 named storms will form this year. This is in near to above-average territory. AccuWeather said that of those 13-17 storms, four to eight will become hurricanes.

The big question that forecasters continue to have about the hurricane season is how record warm waters in the Atlantic will interact with El Niño.

95% of seasonal hurricane activity still to come

“While we’re about one-third of the way done with the season, we’ve got about 95% of seasonal activity to go from an historical perspective,” Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach told USA TODAY.

In fact, according to AccuWeather, the three most active months for hurricanes in the Atlantic are August, September and October. Hurricane season lasts from June through November.

This season, most forecasters – including Klotzbach’s team at Colorado State – continue to be confident of an unusually busy season. Specifically, earlier in July, the CSU team called for a “borderline hyperactive” season in the Atlantic Basin in 2023.

The upgrade from earlier in the year was primarily attributed to extremely warm ocean water in the Atlantic where storms like to form, forecasters said. The unusually warm Atlantic was expected to battle with, and possibly counteract, the hurricane-snuffing influence of El Niño.

 

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