The Gulf Coast is the most at risk of being impacted by a hurricane this year, as forecasters predict a "hyperactive" tropical storm season coming.
Colorado State University and Tropical Storm Risk (TSR), which issue Spring forecasts for the number of hurricanes and named storms each year, are both predicting there will be 11 Atlantic hurricanes in the 2024 season. CSU said this year was already exhibiting similar characteristics to 2010 and 2020, when there were 12 and 14 hurricanes, respectively.
Experts attributed the forecast of an "extremely active" season to warmer than usual sea temperatures and a cooler La Niña pattern in the Pacific, decreasing westerly winds into the Atlantic. Hurricane seasons typically run between June and November in the Atlantic.
As climate change sees global average temperatures rise, average ocean temperatures are also rising, leading to greater levels of evaporation into the atmosphere. This in turn energizes weather systems, making weather patterns more extreme.
CSU noted that warmer-than-average Atlantic waters would favor hurricanes as "a hurricane's fuel source is warm ocean water" and a warmer ocean "leads to lower atmospheric pressure and a more unstable atmosphere."
The institution gave the U.S. coastline overall a 62 percent probability of a major hurricane making landfall, above the 43 percent average across previous years.
Within that, there was a 34 percent probability of landfall for the East Coast including the Florida peninsula, and a 42 percent chance for the Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle.
TSR forecast that three hurricanes would make landfall in 2024, above the 2.1 average for the previous decade, and five tropical storms.
CSU predicted there would be 23 named storms, above the 14.4 average since 1991. It forecast that the 2024 season's hurricane activity would be 170 percent of the average in the past three decades.
By comparison, in 2023 it was around 120 percent, with the most significant storm being Hurricane Idalia, which caused an estimated $3.6 billion worth of damage and eight deaths.
"It takes only one storm near you to make this an active season for you," CSU professor Michael Bell warned.
Both CSU and TSR attributed the relatively active forecast, compared to previous forecasts they had produced, to lower levels of uncertainty, owing to improved modelling and a greater amount of data from previous years to draw from.
"Our analog seasons [1878, 1926, 1998, 2010 and 2020] were all very active Atlantic hurricane seasons," Phil Klotzbach, senior research scientist at CSU's Department of Atmospheric Science and lead author of the report, said. "This highlights the somewhat lower levels of uncertainty that exist with this outlook relative to our typical early April outlook."
TSR put the probability of this year's hurricane season exceeding 11 twisters at around 45 percent, while CSU put it at slightly above 50 percent.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Aleks Phillips is a Newsweek U.S. News Reporter based in London. His focus is on U.S. politics and the environment. ... Read more
