The National Hurricane Center isn’t expecting tropical development over the next week, but don’t let your guard down just yet. Signs are emerging that the break may be brief and tropical activity could heat back up as we enter the final month of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season.
Updated at 9:30 a.m. ET on Oct. 23, 2024
It looks unlikely that another tropical system will develop in October. The American GFS computer forecast model consistently shows a system coming out of the Caribbean around Halloween under a fairly conducive atmospheric pattern, but the other forecast models are not jumping on the idea of a significant system. The GFS is known to get too excited too early, but sometimes it’s right. So we’ll see what November brings.
But for now, at least, a break. No tropical development is expected for the next week.
So far this season, Mother Nature has produced 15 storms that were strong enough to get a name. Ten reached hurricane strength, which is the highest percentage of named storms to hurricanes since the 1940s when Hurricane Hunter missions began. If no more named storms form, this year will eke out a win over 1950 for the highest ratio. This season, the number of named storms was 150% of the number of hurricanes. In 1950, it was 145% – 16 named storms and 11 hurricanes.
The seasonal hurricane forecasts issued last spring were widely panned as a big bust during the long storm-formation hiatus in August and early September. In actual fact, they were pretty good. While they drastically overestimated the number of named storms, they had the number of hurricanes in the ballpark. And it’s hurricanes that count.
Atlantic Tropics activity as of Oct. 23.
The early analyses of the macro conditions that affect storm production were about right. The extremely warm seawater in the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico was undoubtedly a factor in the high percentage of storms reaching hurricane strength. The slowly developing La Niña in the Pacific – normally a factor supportive of storm development – likely contributed to the October hurricane outbreak.
What role did climate change play in these hurricanes of 2024? Or more specifically, would these hurricanes have formed if we hadn’t trapped extra heat in the atmosphere and ocean? The answer to that is complicated by the fact that the weather pattern we have today is different than it would have been without the extra heat in the system.
A different weather pattern could have developed these hurricanes, hurricanes in different places, or hurricanes at different times. But Mother Nature produced monstrous, life- and environment-altering hurricanes before we started warming the world, and there’s no reason to think that won’t continue.
Today’s storms form in a world where the sea level is higher by between 6 inches and a foot, of course. That’s no problem unless it’s the difference between the Gulf water topping the sea wall or coming into the house. Also, the atmosphere holds more moisture in a warmer world, which means heavier rain and flooding. Not to mention the extra energy in the oceans to power the storms.
So yes, hurricanes are at least marginally worse today than they were 50 or 100 years ago. But the bigger factor in the widespread heartbreak and destruction is that we build in hurricane-vulnerable places without hurricanes in mind. Unfortunately, over the past few years, a number of consequential hurricanes have sought out locations they had avoided for years or decades.
As we’ve learned, living along the coast means living with hurricanes. There is nothing to do but to build and plan with storms in mind.