High ocean temperatures suggest hurricane season will be daunting

A key area of the Atlantic Ocean where hurricanes form is abnormally warm, much warmer than an ideal swimming pool temperature of about 80 degrees and on the cusp of feeling more like warm bathtub water.

These conditions were described by Benjamin Kirtman, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Miami, as unprecedented, alarming and an “out-of-bounds anomaly.” Combined with the rapidly subsiding El Niño weather pattern, it is leading to mounting confidence among forecasting experts that there will be an exceptionally high number of storms this hurricane season.

One such expert, Phil Klotzbach, a researcher at Colorado State University, said in his team’s annual forecast Thursday that it expects a remarkably busy season of 23 named storms, including 11 hurricanes — five of them potentially reaching major status, meaning Category 3 or higher. In a typical season, there are 14 named storms with seven hurricanes and three of them major.

Klotzbach said there was a “well above-average probability” that at least one major hurricane would make landfall along the United States and in the Caribbean.

It’s the CSU researchers’ biggest April prediction ever, by a healthy margin, Klotzbach said.

Although things still could play out differently, he said he was more confident than he normally would be this early in the year. All the conditions that he and other researchers look at to forecast the season, such as weather patterns, sea surface temperatures and computer model data, are pointing in one direction. “Normally, I wouldn’t go nearly this high,” he said, but with the data he’s seeing, “Why hedge?”

If anything, he said, his numbers are on the conservative side, and there are computer models that indicate even more storms on the way.

A La Ni ña weather pattern would have forecasters looking toward an aboveaverage year. The possibility of a La Niña, combined with record sea surface temperatures this hurricane season, could create a robust environment for storms to form and intensify this year.

In the main area where hurricanes form, 2024 is the warmest in a decade.

The weather can be fickle, and much can change before the season officially begins June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will issue its own forecast in late May.