Change to the start date of hurricane season is still under consideration
AccuWeather forecasters say there's a high chance of another preseason storm this year. Meanwhile, inside the National Hurricane Center, discussions about whether to abandon June 1 as the official start of Atlantic hurricane season are still ongoing.
By
Mark Puleo, AccuWeather staff writer
Published Apr 5, 2022 3:08 PM EDT
|
Updated Apr 7, 2022 9:43 AM EDT
The 2021 hurricane season was the third most active on record, and AccuWeather’s hurricane experts say the 2022 season could be very similar.
Top officials inside the National Hurricane Center (NHC) are still debating whether to change the official start of hurricane season, according to the agency's director. Meanwhile, AccuWeather forecasters are expecting another very active Atlantic hurricane season in 2022, along with the potential for preseason tropical development. Tropical storms have developed ahead of the June 1 start of hurricane season in each of the last seven years.
In a recent interview with AccuWeather, NHC Director Ken Graham said the agency "put a team together" to examine the possibility of moving up the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season.
"We actually took a look at history and looked at how many storms were actually forming before the season," Graham said in the interview. Among the "interesting statistics" his team turned up, there was the noticeable recent history. "Seven years in a row," Graham said of early-season tropical activity. "We seem to be on this trend."
According to NHC communications and public affairs officer Dennis Feltgen, the team Graham referenced was assembled in 2021 to study the potential effects of moving up the season start date to May 15 and "to determine quantitative thresholds for adding or removing dates from the official Atlantic hurricane season."
The dates June 1 and Nov. 30 have long been considered the official start and end dates of the Atlantic hurricane season. However, about a year ago federal officials inside the NHC and other branches of the National Weather Service began exploring the idea of moving the start of the Atlantic hurricane season to May 15, a move that would not only start the season earlier but lengthen the duration of the Atlantic hurricane season by about two weeks.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APP
Along those lines, the NHC began issuing its routine Atlantic Tropical Weather Outlooks on May 15 in 2021, a practice it will repeat this year.
According to the NHC, internal discussions about making the change "are ongoing" and when asked whether a change might be introduced for the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season, Feltgen said it's "unknown at this time" whether the start date will be moved up next year.
While the official start of the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season will remain June 1, AccuWeather's top hurricane experts say they expect the upcoming season to be yet another year that the basin sees a tropical storm develop before the calendar reaches June.
"I would expect it," AccuWeather Hurricane Expert Dan Kottlowski said. Kottlowski is the driving force behind AccuWeather's annual hurricane forecast and has been for more than 40 years. The 2022 edition of the Atlantic hurricane forecast was released last week, the first such forecast of the year to predict what's in store for this year's hurricane season. Paul Pastelok, the Lead Long-Range Meteorologist at AccuWeather, also discussed the possibility of preseason development in the company's annual spring forecast, which was released in early February.
Tropical Storm Alberto seen in a satellite image approaching the Gulf Coast on May 27, 2018. (NASA WorldView)
NASA
"We've had seven years in a row right now in which we've had early-season or even preseason tropical development. And the panel we see setting up right now is very similar to what we've seen at least last year and the year before last, so there's a good chance that we will have perhaps both preseason and early-season development again," Kottlowski said.
In 2021, Tropical Storm Anna formed during the final week of May. The 2020 season featured two tropical storms, Arthur and Bertha, before June 1. As Kottlowski and Graham mentioned, preseason tropical development has been a staple of recent history, and those early storms haven't all been insignificant.
Before dissipating on May 31, 2018, Alberto became the costliest preseason tropical cyclone in recorded history after making landfall in the U.S. along the Florida Panhandle. Alberto was blamed for eight fatalities in the U.S. and for causing $125 million of damage to the Gulf Coast. Another 10 fatalities in Cuba were blamed on the storm.
When speaking with AccuWeather Broadcast Meteorologist Adam Del Rosso, Graham said conversations about a change have certainly been had with an "internal team."
"We actually put a team together. We looked at it," he said. "We actually took a look at history and looked at how many storms were forming before the season and came up with some interesting statistics."
The NHC declined to share those statistics or the findings of its study with AccuWeather, but data from recent years certainly has AccuWeather meteorologists on guard for early-season development.
A huge reason for that, Kottlowski said, has to do with increased water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico. The 2022 season, in particular, is already showing signs that the conversation around when to start hurricane season won't be going away anytime soon.
"Sea surface temperatures are above normal over much of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean and even off the East Coast of the United States, especially the southeast coast of the United States, and these are critical areas for early-season development," Kottlowski said, going on to add that having this warm water in place is a sign that storms could spin up in the preseason.
"So, basically, for early-season [and] preseason development, water temperatures are sufficiently warm right now," he said. "And we believe the whole Atlantic basin will be -- the sea surface temperatures -- will be favorable for tropical development."
At the opposite end of the season, the official end date of hurricane season has been changed multiple times in the past. The original time frame for monitoring the tropics ranged from June 15 to Oct. 31, with the end date eventually being shifted to Nov. 15 before settling on Nov. 30 by 1965.
For the latest weather news check back on AccuWeather.com. Watch the AccuWeather Network on DIRECTV, Frontier, Spectrum, fuboTV, Philo, and Verizon Fios. AccuWeather Now is now available on your preferred streaming platform.
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News / Hurricane
Change to the start date of hurricane season is still under consideration
AccuWeather forecasters say there's a high chance of another preseason storm this year. Meanwhile, inside the National Hurricane Center, discussions about whether to abandon June 1 as the official start of Atlantic hurricane season are still ongoing.
By Mark Puleo, AccuWeather staff writer
Published Apr 5, 2022 3:08 PM EDT | Updated Apr 7, 2022 9:43 AM EDT
The 2021 hurricane season was the third most active on record, and AccuWeather’s hurricane experts say the 2022 season could be very similar.
Top officials inside the National Hurricane Center (NHC) are still debating whether to change the official start of hurricane season, according to the agency's director. Meanwhile, AccuWeather forecasters are expecting another very active Atlantic hurricane season in 2022, along with the potential for preseason tropical development. Tropical storms have developed ahead of the June 1 start of hurricane season in each of the last seven years.
In a recent interview with AccuWeather, NHC Director Ken Graham said the agency "put a team together" to examine the possibility of moving up the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season.
"We actually took a look at history and looked at how many storms were actually forming before the season," Graham said in the interview. Among the "interesting statistics" his team turned up, there was the noticeable recent history. "Seven years in a row," Graham said of early-season tropical activity. "We seem to be on this trend."
According to NHC communications and public affairs officer Dennis Feltgen, the team Graham referenced was assembled in 2021 to study the potential effects of moving up the season start date to May 15 and "to determine quantitative thresholds for adding or removing dates from the official Atlantic hurricane season."
The dates June 1 and Nov. 30 have long been considered the official start and end dates of the Atlantic hurricane season. However, about a year ago federal officials inside the NHC and other branches of the National Weather Service began exploring the idea of moving the start of the Atlantic hurricane season to May 15, a move that would not only start the season earlier but lengthen the duration of the Atlantic hurricane season by about two weeks.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APP
Along those lines, the NHC began issuing its routine Atlantic Tropical Weather Outlooks on May 15 in 2021, a practice it will repeat this year.
According to the NHC, internal discussions about making the change "are ongoing" and when asked whether a change might be introduced for the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season, Feltgen said it's "unknown at this time" whether the start date will be moved up next year.
While the official start of the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season will remain June 1, AccuWeather's top hurricane experts say they expect the upcoming season to be yet another year that the basin sees a tropical storm develop before the calendar reaches June.
"I would expect it," AccuWeather Hurricane Expert Dan Kottlowski said. Kottlowski is the driving force behind AccuWeather's annual hurricane forecast and has been for more than 40 years. The 2022 edition of the Atlantic hurricane forecast was released last week, the first such forecast of the year to predict what's in store for this year's hurricane season. Paul Pastelok, the Lead Long-Range Meteorologist at AccuWeather, also discussed the possibility of preseason development in the company's annual spring forecast, which was released in early February.
Tropical Storm Alberto seen in a satellite image approaching the Gulf Coast on May 27, 2018. (NASA WorldView)
"We've had seven years in a row right now in which we've had early-season or even preseason tropical development. And the panel we see setting up right now is very similar to what we've seen at least last year and the year before last, so there's a good chance that we will have perhaps both preseason and early-season development again," Kottlowski said.
In 2021, Tropical Storm Anna formed during the final week of May. The 2020 season featured two tropical storms, Arthur and Bertha, before June 1. As Kottlowski and Graham mentioned, preseason tropical development has been a staple of recent history, and those early storms haven't all been insignificant.
Before dissipating on May 31, 2018, Alberto became the costliest preseason tropical cyclone in recorded history after making landfall in the U.S. along the Florida Panhandle. Alberto was blamed for eight fatalities in the U.S. and for causing $125 million of damage to the Gulf Coast. Another 10 fatalities in Cuba were blamed on the storm.
When speaking with AccuWeather Broadcast Meteorologist Adam Del Rosso, Graham said conversations about a change have certainly been had with an "internal team."
"We actually put a team together. We looked at it," he said. "We actually took a look at history and looked at how many storms were forming before the season and came up with some interesting statistics."
The NHC declined to share those statistics or the findings of its study with AccuWeather, but data from recent years certainly has AccuWeather meteorologists on guard for early-season development.
A huge reason for that, Kottlowski said, has to do with increased water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico. The 2022 season, in particular, is already showing signs that the conversation around when to start hurricane season won't be going away anytime soon.
"Sea surface temperatures are above normal over much of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean and even off the East Coast of the United States, especially the southeast coast of the United States, and these are critical areas for early-season development," Kottlowski said, going on to add that having this warm water in place is a sign that storms could spin up in the preseason.
"So, basically, for early-season [and] preseason development, water temperatures are sufficiently warm right now," he said. "And we believe the whole Atlantic basin will be -- the sea surface temperatures -- will be favorable for tropical development."
At the opposite end of the season, the official end date of hurricane season has been changed multiple times in the past. The original time frame for monitoring the tropics ranged from June 15 to Oct. 31, with the end date eventually being shifted to Nov. 15 before settling on Nov. 30 by 1965.
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For the latest weather news check back on AccuWeather.com. Watch the AccuWeather Network on DIRECTV, Frontier, Spectrum, fuboTV, Philo, and Verizon Fios. AccuWeather Now is now available on your preferred streaming platform.
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