The Atlantic hurricane season has begun: What we know and what we don’t

Congratulations, everyone—we've made it to the startline of the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season.

Fasten your seatbelts because it could be a wild and bumpy ride. Or maybe not. Because when it comes to tropical activity, no one can be sure what will happen more than a few days into the future. And after about 10 or 12 days? Chaos theory rules, baby.

Not everyone needs to read this article, but many of you do. According to the US Census, more than 60 million Americans live in coastal areas vulnerable to tropical systems in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. For those residents, including yours truly, the threat of a tropical storm or hurricane lurks in the back of one's mind during the summer months like the dull pain of a past injury. The longer it has been since a nearby landfall, the more distant the hum. But it's there.

Seriously, you try living with the threat that at any point during a six-month period, a hurricane could:

• Blow your house down
• Wash it away in a storm surge
• Flood it from the garage up with tropical rainfall
• All of the above

As a meteorologist living hard by the Gulf Coast, I find that the best coping mechanism is to arm oneself with as much information as possible. So with today being that special day, here are some things we know about the upcoming hurricane season and a few we don't.

How long is hurricane season?

Officially, the Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30, but there are many caveats. For starters, tropical storms, subtropical storms, and even hurricanes can form before or after the official start of the season. On average, there is a tropical system in May that gets a name every other year. Frankly, I find it a bit surprising that we haven't seen any organized activity yet in the Atlantic, given the warm state of the tropical ocean waters.

The other thing to know is that the vast majority of Atlantic hurricane activity comes during a roughly 10-week period, from early August to late October. Why? Because every year, Poseidon gets excited about the prospects for the University of Texas football team but grows increasingly wroth and spiteful when the team loses some early season games. As such, he stirs up the oceans—oh wait, that's actually me who gets upset at the losses. How embarrassing.

Anyway, there are a couple of reasons why things start to hit the fan in August. This is about when tropical Atlantic seas reach their peak temperatures and are most conducive to forming and intensifying storms. Also, the "tropical wave train" really gets rolling off of the African coast during late summer, which means that low-pressure systems propagate westward into the Atlantic and run into those warm seas. Finally, wind shear typically dips in August and September in the Gulf of Mexico and other places close to landmasses.

So yeah, hurricane season starts today. But it probably won't hit the afterburners until August.

Will this be a busy season?

Great question. We don't know.

Aren’t you getting paid by the word?

Good point.

Let's start by acknowledging that seasonal hurricane forecasting is somewhere between an art and a science. I admire scientists like Phil Klotzbach at Colorado State because he takes a rigorous approach to seasonal forecasting, publicly shares his methodology, and applies scientific techniques. He's predicting a slightly below-normal-activity Atlantic season, by the way.

The problem is that seasonal forecasting like this doesn't do much good. Let's say you're living in Miami in 1992. Everyone is wearing sleek white sport coats and thinks it's a hip place to hang because they all just watched Miami Vice. At first, it looks like a slow year for hurricanes. Not a single storm has formed by the middle of August, which is way late to get the season started. But—sorry—one just formed on August 16. And I'm sorry to say, but Hurricane Andrew has become a Category 5 hurricane. It just struck Miami.

Overall, there were just seven named storms in 1992, half of the seasonal average. But the worst tropical system to ever hit Florida wrecked Miami. So was it a slow season?

There's a corny old adage in hurricane forecasting: "It only takes one." And that's true. If there's just one named storm in a given season, but it hits you, it's a "busy" season. So I look at seasonal hurricane forecasts. I like the forecasters. But I don't place too much stock in them.

Didn’t NOAA make a hurricane season prediction?

Why yes, yes it did. And it's super helpful. According to NOAA, we have a 30 percent chance of a below-normal season, a 30 percent chance of an above-normal season, and a 40 percent chance of a near-normal season. Thanks, guys, that really clears things right up.

In reality, I think the forthcoming season will be really difficult to predict, and this is reflected in the ambivalence of the seasonal forecasts.

What does that even mean?

It means there are good reasons to think this season will be busy as hell and good reasons to think it will be rather slow. For example, seasonal forecasters are banking on a fairly strong El Niño developing and persisting in the tropical Pacific Ocean this summer, which would tend to increase wind shear over the Atlantic Ocean. That would be great, as it would hamper storm formation and could rip existing hurricanes apart.

However, some climate scientists, like Gavin Schmidt, have noted that the evidence for a strong El Niño isn't exactly clear-cut, especially when the period of time we're really concerned about doesn't start for another three months. So we'll see on that one.

More problematically, the global oceans are smoking hot right now. Since March, the daily sea surface temperature of the world's oceans is hotter than at any point in the last 40 years, the period for which detailed records are available. Much of this warmth is doubtlessly due to climate change. That's very bad for a lot of things on planet Earth, including the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season.

What's more, the temperature anomalies are especially pronounced in the "main development region" of the Atlantic Ocean, between Africa and the Caribbean Sea. This is the region where most storms form before moving west toward the continental United States, Caribbean Islands, Mexico, and Central America. This bathtub-like temperature trend is likely to persist into the summer months when hurricanes are most active.

My gut feeling is that this season will end up being pretty active. Looking at recent satellite images, the tropics already look fairly sporty for the start of the season, and I'm guessing this is a harbinger of things to come. But that's just a guess, so treat it as such.

Is there any good news?

There is. Whereas seasonal hurricane forecasts are of limited utility, actual hurricane forecasts are pretty darn good, and they're getting better every year. A slew of global models, statistical models, and hurricane-specific models are improving thanks to higher resolutions, more powerful supercomputers, and better data input.

The upshot is that our track forecasts are frequently very accurate out to four or even five days, and sometimes longer. We're also getting a better handle on intensity fluctuations. Forecasts are far from perfect, of course, but they're so much better than they were when I first got into this business.

By the way, you can get your weather forecasts from countless places online and on television, but for simplicity's sake, the National Hurricane Center's products are the best in the business. It's one area where your tax dollars are exceptionally well-spent.

Can you actually offer me any helpful advice?

Setting aside snark for sincerity, and as someone who has lived with hurricanes for more than a quarter of a century and written about them for as long, let me tell you this. The overall chance of any community being directly affected by a hurricane in any given year is quite low. Even along the Gulf Coast, where I live, there are about 10 years on average between serious impacts.

So be wary, not worried.

What this means is that a bit of preparation now will go a long way when a storm threatens. For example, know the vulnerabilities of where you live. Are you at risk for storm surge? If so, have a plan for how to evacuate: figure out what you'll need to bring; how you'll account for family members, pets, and important documents; and where you'll go.

If you're not at risk for storm surge—which is by far the most deadly aspect of a hurricane—the question of whether to evacuate is a bit more difficult. Sometimes, people evacuate for more than just concerns about life and death.

In Houston a few years ago, a Category 2 hurricane named Ike made landfall along the upper Texas coast. Houston fell on the "weak" side of the storm, and much of the city did not even see sustained hurricane-force winds as Ike moved inland. Nevertheless, a large chunk of the 6 million residents of the greater Houston area were without power for two weeks. In September. For people with medical needs, it was life-threatening. But even for reasonably healthy people, the heat and humidity was not pleasant. Do you want to deal with the aftermath? Think about how you would handle that now and make plans and buy supplies accordingly.

There are many variables that go into everyone's personal situation with hurricanes. Considering your vulnerability to a storm's various threats now, and what you will do to mitigate it, will ensure you're ready for action if the worst comes. Which hopefully it wont. Because hurricanes suck.

No, really, they do. They're centers of low pressure. I'll see myself out now.