FORT WALTON BEACH — If you were thinking it’s been a quiet year for hurricanes, forecasters say you shouldn’t let your guard down. The worst is yet to come.
“Still 75 percent of the season to go,” Weather Channel meteorologist and on-air personality Jim Cantore wrote in a twitter post to the Daily News. “They will happen.”
See photos of past hurricanes in the area. >>
But how many will happen, and how ferociously, remains a matter of conjecture, with many forecasters insisting the Atlantic basin will see a very busy remainder of the season despite the comparatively slow start.
“I am forecasting that the ‘lid will come off’ on tropical activity right around Aug. 15 with a flurry of activity between about Aug. 15 and Sept. 20,” said Rob Lightbown, a meteorologist and owner of Crown Weather Services, a private weather data company headquartered in Caribou, Maine. “(The) pattern this year is pretty ripe to see at least a couple of landfalling hurricanes along the U.S. Southeast and Gulf coasts between Aug. 15 and Oct. 15.”
Hurricane season begins June 1 and ends Nov. 30. The most active part of the season usually revs up around mid-August and peaks on Sept. 10, after which storm activity begins to decline, according to climatology data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Before each season starts, hurricane forecasting entities like Tropical Storm Risk, the Colorado State University team of Philip J. Klotzbach and William M. Gray, NOAA and others issue pre-season outlooks. In 2013 the outlooks called for an active season, with between 15 and 20 named storms, and five to 10 hurricanes. On average there are 12 named storms and six hurricanes each year, according to the Climate Prediction Center.
So far this year, the tropics have produced four named storms and no hurricanes. That’s busier than normal according to National Hurricane Center data, which indicate between 1966 and 2009 the average date of the fourth named storm is Aug. 23.
But compared to more recent, active seasons?
“It has not been busy,” said John Purdy, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Mobile, Ala. “I don’t know what the guys down there at the Hurricane Center are doing.”
He said the same weather pattern that brought the Emerald Coast persistent rain starting in mid-June might be responsible for discouraging tropical storms and hurricanes from forming in this neck of the woods.
A series of upper level troughs, typical of fall, winter and spring, has persisted over the eastern United States this summer, Purdy said.
“It won’t go away. It will lift up but another one carves out right behind it, providing upper atmospheric support for continuous showers and thunderstorms,” he said.
Those troughs generate wind shear, which damages tropical cyclones.
“Hurricanes like low wind shear,” Purdy said. “In upper troughs, wind shear is higher. It rips apart tropical systems.”
But he warned that the overall pattern could change and allow more tropical cyclone activity to occur in these parts.
Some of the previously mentioned forecasting entities have begun to back off a little from their pre-season outlooks. The Colorado State team recently lowered the number of hurricanes it expects from nine to eight. It also lowered the odds of a storm hitting the United States, as did Tropical Storm Risk. On Thursday, NOAA released its August outlook and reduced the level of extreme cyclone activity it expects this season.
But even with slightly lower numbers, they still believe the season will be active.
“In the hurricane season forecast I wrote back in late April, I predicted a total of 16 named storms, nine of those storms becoming hurricanes and five of those hurricanes becoming major hurricanes,” Lightbown said. “I still believe that we will either match those numbers or come very close to those numbers when everything is said and done.”
Jeff Masters, who co-founded The Weather Underground weather service, said, “The curve for Atlantic hurricane activity makes a very steep upward climb beginning about Aug. 19, historically. It is not unusual to have a quiet early start to August, then have activity kick into high gear late in the month.
“I am still anticipating an above-average season for hurricane activity.”
Ultimately, whether the season is busy or not doesn’t matter if the cone of probability centers on your slice of the coast.
“All it takes is one,” Cantore wrote.
Get more weather information from the following sources:
- Jim Cantore twitterfeed: @JimCantore
- The Weather Underground
- National Hurricane Center
- National Weather Service, Mobile, Ala., office
- Crown Weather Services
Contact Daily News Online Editor Del Stone Jr. at 850-315-4433 or at dstone@nwfdailynews.com. Follow him on twitter at @delsnwfdn, and friend him on Facebook at dels nwfdn.