Congratulations, everyone—we've made it to the startline of the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season.
Fasten your seatbelts because it could be a wild and bumpy ride. Or maybe not. Because when it comes to tropical activity, no one can be sure what will happen more than a few days into the future. And after about 10 or 12 days? Chaos theory rules, baby.
Not everyone needs to read this article, but many of you do. According to the US Census, more than 60 million Americans live in coastal areas vulnerable to tropical systems in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. For those residents, including yours truly, the threat of a tropical storm or hurricane lurks in the back of one's mind during the summer months like the dull pain of a past injury. The longer it has been since a nearby landfall, the more distant the hum. But it's there.
Seriously, you try living with the threat that at any point during a six-month period, a hurricane could:
- Blow your house down
- Wash it away in a storm surge
- Flood it from the garage up with tropical rainfall
- All of the above
As a meteorologist living hard by the Gulf Coast, I find that the best coping mechanism is to arm oneself with as much information as possible. So with today being that special day, here are some things we know about the upcoming hurricane season and a few we don't.
How long is hurricane season?
Officially, the Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30, but there are many caveats. For starters, tropical storms, subtropical storms, and even hurricanes can form before or after the official start of the season. On average, there is a tropical system in May that gets a name every other year. Frankly, I find it a bit surprising that we haven't seen any organized activity yet in the Atlantic, given the warm state of the tropical ocean waters.
The other thing to know is that the vast majority of Atlantic hurricane activity comes during a roughly 10-week period, from early August to late October. Why? Because every year, Poseidon gets excited about the prospects for the University of Texas football team but grows increasingly wroth and spiteful when the team loses some early season games. As such, he stirs up the oceans—oh wait, that's actually me who gets upset at the losses. How embarrassing.
Anyway, there are a couple of reasons why things start to hit the fan in August. This is about when tropical Atlantic seas reach their peak temperatures and are most conducive to forming and intensifying storms. Also, the "tropical wave train" really gets rolling off of the African coast during late summer, which means that low-pressure systems propagate westward into the Atlantic and run into those warm seas. Finally, wind shear typically dips in August and September in the Gulf of Mexico and other places close to landmasses.
So yeah, hurricane season starts today. But it probably won't hit the afterburners until August.