“While it’s predicted that this year will be near-normal, it’s important to remember that it only takes one hurricane making landfall to make it a bad season”.
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This is one of the toughest hurricane season outlooks ever made due to the abundance of atmospheric variables, said Gerry Bell, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. Of those, four to eight could become hurricanes, with winds of 74 miles per hour or higher. The season officially begins Wednesday and runs through November 30.
Tropical Depression Two of the 2016 Atlantic hurricane season has formed off of the southeastern United States, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said on Friday.
The Canadian Hurricane Centre (CHC) is encouraging Canadians to prepare for the 2016 hurricane season.
FILE- In this October 3, 2015 file photo, Dillon Christ, front, and Kyle Barnell paddle their canoe down a flooded street in Charleston, S.C. The U.S. government is set to release its forecast for how many hurricanes and tropical storms are expected to form over Atlantic and Caribbean waters in the next six months.
An Air Force “hurricane hunter” plane on Friday afternoon is scheduled to investigate the low pressure system causing the tropical disturbance. “This year, there is strong variability in several key climate factors greater than in past years, and so there is uncertainty as to whether these factors will be reinforcing each other, or competing with respect to tropical storm formation”.
The end of the warming climate pattern El Nino and the arrival of the cooling trend in the equatorial Pacific known as La Nina could favour the increase in hurricane activity, said NOAA administrator Kathryn Sullivan. Six to 11 of those could become hurricanes, including three to six major hurricanes.
The eras of high- and low-activity usually last 25 to 40 years. Subtropical storms are a type of hybrid system, but they carry the same impacts as tropical storms.
A meteorological phenomenon known as El Niño that has strongly influenced weather since a year ago is expected to weaken.
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A combination of fewer tropical storms and a lessening reliance on Gulf of Mexico production (thanks to the growth of production out of inland shale plays) has kept hurricane-related damage to the nation’s energy infrastructure and markets to a minimum in recent years. During a warm period, which we have been in for more than 20 years, the warmth fuels hurricanes.
