Another above-average hurricane season predicted

After the most ferocious hurricane season on record in 2020, top hurricane forecasters on Thursday warned that this year also might bring another active, above-normal season.

For the season, which begins June 1, meteorologist Phil Klotzbach and other experts from Colorado State University – among the nation’s top seasonal hurricane forecasters – predict 17 named tropical storms will form, eight of which will become hurricanes.

An average season has 12 tropical storms, six of which are hurricanes. In 2020, there were a whopping 30 named storms, 13 of which were hurricanes.

If the prediction holds true, it will be the sixth consecutive above-normal season. A tropical storm becomes a hurricane when its sustained wind speeds reach 74 mph.

Of the eight predicted hurricanes, four are expected to spin into major hurricanes – Category 3, 4 or 5 – with sustained wind speeds of 111 mph or greater. The group said there’s a 69% chance that at least one major hurricane will make landfall somewhere in the U.S.

Klotzbach, the lead author of CSU’s forecast, said previous seasons with similar atmospheric setups include 1996, 2001, 2008, 2011 and 2017.

“All of our analog seasons had aboveaverage Atlantic hurricane activity, with 1996 and 2017 being extremely active seasons,” Klotzbach said.

Overall, the team predicts that hurricane activity will be about 140% of the average season.

The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, though storms sometimes form outside those dates. In fact, storms have formed in May in each of the past six years.

Reasons for the predicted active season include unusually warm seawater in portions of the Atlantic Ocean and also the lack of an El Niño. One of the major determining factors in hurricane forecasting is whether we are in an El Niño or La Niña climate pattern.

El Niño is a natural warming of tropical Pacific Ocean water, which tends to suppress the development of Atlantic hurricanes. Its opposite, La Niña, marked by cooler ocean water, tends to increase hurricanes in the Atlantic.

Forecasters from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will issue their prediction in May.