Hurricane season seems to be rallying for a final surge of storms.
AccuWeather, a world-leading weather forecasting company, predicts that November will bring one to three tropical storms strong enough to get names, and the first one could come in just a week.
Florida and the Carolinas are the most at-risk states. Communities there are still reeling from Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
“We are concerned that areas, the entire state of Florida even up into the Carolinas, could be at risk of seeing another tropical impact this season,” Alex DaSilva, a hurricane expert at AccuWeather, said in a statement. “And of course, those areas are already very, very vulnerable from multiple hits this season.”
Meanwhile, the AccuWeather forecast predicts very low storm risk for the western Gulf Coast — Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.
Chance of a December cyclone
It’s already been a nasty hurricane season, with storms so far causing more than 300 deaths and nearly $500 billion of losses in the US, according to AccuWeather.
Hurricane season ends on November 30, but DaSilva said there may be a rare December cyclone this year.
“It doesn’t happen very often, but the very warm sea surface temperatures could make it possible this year,” DaSilva said.
As greenhouse-gas emissions from human activities drive global temperatures higher, ocean temperatures are also rising. Both warm water and warm air fuel stronger storms.
Another factor in AccuWeather’s forecast is low wind shear, which is the change in wind speed and direction over a short distance. When it’s low, the wind is less likely to disrupt storm formation.
The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) does not forecast hurricanes more than seven days out, a representative told Business Insider.
However, the NHC said in August that this Atlantic hurricane season would likely produce 17 to 24 named storms total. So far, there have been 15 named storms.
A possible storm is already brewing
AccuWeather reported “high risk” of a storm forming in the first week of November, starting on Friday.
The NHC is also monitoring the region, which it has assigned a 40% chance of forming a tropical depression in the next seven days.
“We’re becoming more confident that the next named storm in the Atlantic basin could form within the next week,” Bernie Rayno, AccuWeather’s chief on-air meteorologist, said in a statement.
DaSilva said that rain and thunderstorms occurring in the southern Caribbean are “early signs of development,” and that a high-pressure area building to the north of that could create the right conditions for a cyclone.
This could lead to a tropical storm or even a hurricane in the first few days of November,” DaSilva said.
According to DaSilva, if a storm forms there it could move over Cuba and into the Atlantic, or it could head for Florida.
Only three hurricanes have made landfall in the US in November since 1900. The most recent was Hurricane Nicole, which struck Florida as a Category 1 storm in November 2022 and worsened damage from Hurricane Ian.
The others were Hurricane Kate, which hit the Florida panhandle as a Category 2 on November 15, 1985, and the 1935 “Yankee Hurricane,” which struck Florida in the first week of November as it traveled down from the north.
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