Congratulations, everybody—we have made it to the startline of the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season.
Fasten your seatbelts as a result of it might be a wild and bumpy experience. Or perhaps not. As a result of in terms of tropical exercise, nobody could be certain what’s going to occur quite a lot of days into the long run. And after about 10 or 12 days? Chaos concept guidelines, child.
Not everybody must learn this text, however a lot of you do. In accordance with the US Census, greater than 60 million Individuals dwell in coastal areas weak to tropical methods within the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. For these residents, together with yours really, the specter of a tropical storm or hurricane lurks at the back of one’s thoughts in the course of the summer season months just like the boring ache of a previous damage. The longer it has been since a close-by landfall, the extra distant the hum. But it surely’s there.
Significantly, you attempt residing with the menace that at any level throughout a six-month interval, a hurricane might:
- Blow your own home down
- Wash it away in a storm surge
- Flood it from the storage up with tropical rainfall
- The entire above
As a meteorologist residing exhausting by the Gulf Coast, I discover that one of the best coping mechanism is to arm oneself with as a lot info as attainable. So with as we speak being that special occasion, listed here are some issues we all know in regards to the upcoming hurricane season and some we do not.
How lengthy is hurricane season?
Formally, the Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30, however there are a lot of caveats. For starters, tropical storms, subtropical storms, and even hurricanes can kind earlier than or after the official begin of the season. On common, there’s a tropical system in Could that will get a reputation each different yr. Frankly, I discover it a bit shocking that we have not seen any organized exercise but within the Atlantic, given the nice and cozy state of the tropical ocean waters.
The opposite factor to know is that the overwhelming majority of Atlantic hurricane exercise comes throughout a roughly 10-week interval, from early August to late October. Why? As a result of yearly, Poseidon will get excited in regards to the prospects for the College of Texas soccer workforce however grows more and more wroth and spiteful when the workforce loses some early season video games. As such, he stirs up the oceans—oh wait, that is really me who will get upset on the losses. How embarrassing.
Anyway, there are a few the explanation why issues begin to hit the fan in August. That is about when tropical Atlantic seas attain their peak temperatures and are most conducive to forming and intensifying storms. Additionally, the “tropical wave prepare” actually will get rolling off of the African coast throughout late summer season, which implies that low-pressure methods propagate westward into the Atlantic and run into these heat seas. Lastly, wind shear usually dips in August and September within the Gulf of Mexico and different locations near landmasses.
So yeah, hurricane season begins as we speak. But it surely most likely will not hit the afterburners till August.