Hurricane season is officially underway. Here, from weather.com, is what we can expect in the next two months:
Hurricane season officially begins Tuesday, June 1, and while it’s expected to be another active year, the early part of the season has historically been slow.
The National Hurricane Center selected the June 1 to Nov. 30 period for the Atlantic hurricane season because it encompasses more than 97% of tropical cyclones. But storms can occasionally form before or after those dates, as we saw this May with the brief development of Tropical Storm Ana east of Bermuda.
Early in the season, we typically do not look at the main development region of the central and eastern Atlantic for tropical storms or hurricanes. We look closer to home.
The southeastern U.S. coast, the Gulf of Mexico and the western Caribbean Sea are breeding grounds for tropical cyclones in June. July is when we start to look a bit farther east because the region of the Atlantic near the Lesser Antilles can also become riper for development.
Since storms that form early in the year typically start out closer to land, that can increase the chance of impacts along the Gulf and Southeast coasts of the U.S., as well as parts of the Caribbean.
Just 13% of the tropical storms from 1851 to 2018 in the Atlantic have occurred in June and July combined. For comparison, August, September and October have accounted for 24%, 36% and 21% of all tropical storms on record, respectively.
On average, there’s one June named storm in the Atlantic, Caribbean or Gulf of Mexico every one to two years. July has a slightly higher rate of occurrence, but it has still averaged less than one named storm per year since 1851.
Last year’s hyperactive hurricane season was an exception to the general slow start rule of thumb.
First, Arthur and Bertha developed in late May.
There were two named storms in June, including Cristobal and Dolly. Cristobal struck southeastern Louisiana as a tropical storm.
That was followed by a July that had five named storms form in the month for just the second time on record. Two of those storms became hurricanes: Hanna and Isaias.
By the end of July, the Atlantic already had a record-breaking nine named storms develop. Read more:
