“You need to start preparing now.”

spawns six hurricanes and peaks in August and September.

A tropical storm contains wind speeds of 39 mph or higher and becomes a hurricane when winds reach 74 mph.

Even before the season kicks into gear, forecasters are watching a system that’s predicted to form in the Gulf of Mexico during this Memorial Day weekend.

“There are no climate signals that suggest this season will be extremely active like last season, or extremely weak,” said Gerry Bell, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.

“Millions of people need to know that hurricane season is coming, and that you need to start preparing now,” Bell said.

The possibility of a weak El Nino developing — along with near-average ocean temperatures in the tropical Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea — are two of the factors driving this year’s outlook. El Nino, a natural warming of the central Pacific Ocean, often acts to tamp down Atlantic hurricanes.

“If an El Nino develops, it could shut down the latter part of the season,” Bell said.

According to NOAA, these factors are set against a backdrop of long-term climate conditions that have been producing stronger Atlantic hurricane seasons since 1995.

Earlier this year, meteorologist Phil Klotzbach and other experts from Colorado State University predicted 14 named tropical storms will form, of which seven will become hurricanes.

Last year, NOAA predicted 11 to 17 named tropical storms, of which five to nine would be hurricanes. Seventeen named storms formed, of which 10 were hurricanes.

This included such monsters as Harvey, Irma and Maria, which led to the costliest hurricane seasons on record, at more than $200 billion in damage, NOAA said.