Hurricane Season Update

 

The second week of September is historically the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season.  However, everything about this season has been atypical and the tropical Atlantic has been unusually quiet with only five tropical storms, of which two intensified into hurricanes.  That lags behind NOAA’s updated forecast for 14 – 20 tropical storms, 6 – 10 hurricanes of which 3 – 5 become major hurricanes.

Currently, there aren’t any active tropical storms or hurricanes anywhere in the Atlantic.  According to the National Hurricane Center, there is a less than 40% chance for a tropical storm to develop anywhere in the Atlantic during the next five days.  According to hurricane expert, Dr. Philip Klotzbach of Colorado State University, “The 2022 Atlantic hurricane season has had only two named storm formations since July 2 (Danielle and Earl).”  He went on to explain that since 1950 that’s only happened three previous times, most recently in 1992.

However, the Atlantic hurricane season is long: spanning half the year from June through November.  The middle of September is commonly the most active time, when atmospheric and environmental conditions are the most favorable.  That’s when sea surface temperatures are at the warmest levels across the largest geographic area in conjunction with the lowest levels of wind shear (winds of differing speeds at different levels of the atmosphere). 

Since the season is more than half over with so few named storms so far, the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season has a long way to go in order to merely be an “average” season.  This season was initially expected to be an average to slightly busier than average season due to an ongoing episode of La Nina, but it hasn’t panned out that way.

That’s not so say a flurry of storms can’t still develop as the tropics can be quite active well into October.  Not all named storms are particularly strong or long-lasting.  Prior to the satellite era, storms that remained over the open ocean were not detected unless a ship happened to be in the vicinity.  The only other way to tell if a storm existed was if it made landfall.

Since a hurricane season can have a high number of weak systems that produce a higher overall number of named storms, scientists also look at “Accumulated Cyclone Energy” or “ACE.”  NOAA measures ACE on the “ACE Index,” which is a measure of how active the hurricane season is based on the overall “wind speed and duration of each tropical cyclone.”  An average amount of ACE during an Atlantic hurricane season is 96.7 units (10⁴ kt²). The Atlantic’s seasonal amount of ACE through September 12 is only 29.6 units, or less than half of what it should be at this point of the season.  ACE is independent of whether or not a particular hurricane season is a destructive one.