Colorado State University’s tropical weather and climate team forecast “an extremely active” 2024 Atlantic hurricane season.
The team, in its initial forecast announced Thursday, predicts 23 named storms during the Atlantic hurricane season, which is June 1 to Nov. 30. Of those, 11 are expected to become hurricanes and five to reach major hurricane strength, or Category 3 to 5 on the Saffir/Simpson scale, with sustained winds of 111 mph or greater.
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This is the highest prediction for hurricanes that the team has ever issued with their April outlook, researchers said. The prior highest April forecast was for nine hurricanes, which has been called for several times since 1995 when the university began issuing April forecasts.
The team cites “record warm tropical and eastern subtropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures” as a major factor for their initial prediction. A very warm Atlantic favors an above-average season, since a hurricane’s fuel source is warm ocean water, and leads to lower atmospheric pressure and a more unstable atmosphere, both of which favor hurricanes.
The team predicts that 2024 hurricane activity will be about 170% of the average season from 1991 to 2020. By comparison, 2023’s hurricane activity was about 120% of the average season.
This year’s hurricane season is exhibiting characteristics similar to 1878, 1926, 1998, 2010 and 2020.
“Our analog seasons were all very active Atlantic hurricane seasons,” said Phil Klotzbach, senior research scientist in the Department of Atmospheric Science at CSU and lead author of the report. “This highlights the somewhat lower levels of uncertainty that exist with this outlook relative to our typical early April outlook.”
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Given the considerable changes that can occur in the atmosphere and ocean between April and the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season from August to October, the team stressed that the April outlook historically has the “lowest level of skill” of their operational seasonal hurricane forecasts.
