Looking ahead to hurricane season

 

Hurricane Ian, September 2022 (Source: WUSA9)

The 2023 Atlantic hurricane season gets underway on June 1.  If recent seasons are any indication, it will be another active one as many seasons have been over the last decade.  There are some important trends to look at as hurricane season gets closer.

Last season featured two particularly catastrophic hurricanes, Fiona and Ian.  The World Meteorological Organization recently retired both names so neither will be used on any subsequent lists of tropical cyclone names.  Fiona caused widespread damage on some of the Caribbean Islands, including Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.  At peak intensity, Fiona was a Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of 140 mph. 

Hurricane Ian briefly reached Category 5 status with sustained winds of 160 mph, but weakened to Category 4 intensity before its landfall along the west coast of Florida.  Ian did approximately $112 billion worth of damage in the United States according to NOAA.  That made it the third-costliest hurricane in U.S. history.  Ian was also the first Category 5 Atlantic hurricane since Lorenzo in 2019.  The 2022 Atlantic hurricane season was also notable for having no named storms during the entire month of August, while three minimal hurricanes developed in November.

At least one named storm has developed before the official June 1 start of the Atlantic hurricane season in seven of the last eight years.  However, last year was the first time since 2014 that no named storms developed before the hurricane season officially got underway.  A system gets a name when it reaches tropical storm intensity when sustained winds, around the center of circulation, reach at least 39 mph.  A tropical storm becomes a hurricane when sustained winds reach 74 mph.  A hurricane becomes “major” when sustained winds reach 111 mph or greater making it a Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

It’s important to remember that a hurricane season doesn’t need to be active to be destructive.  There have been several seasons that have produced an above average number of tropical storms and hurricanes, but most remained over the open ocean with no direct impacts on land masses.  Meanwhile there have been quieter than average seasons that have produced destructive and deadly hurricanes.  Hurricane Andrew, for example, developed in 1992 and was only the third Category 5 hurricane on record to make landfall in the United States.  The only major hurricane of the 1992 season, Andrew, was also the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history until 2005. 

An “average” Atlantic hurricane season has 14 tropical storms, of which 7 intensify into hurricanes with 3 becoming “major” hurricanes.  NOAA’s average is based on the 30-year period of 1991-2020.  NOAA will issue its seasonal forecast for the upcoming hurricane season in a couple of weeks.