This year’s hurricane season forecast calls for a quieter season than usual, with only a handful of hurricanes and even fewer storms that make it above a Category 3.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s forecast, released Wednesday, is predicting only 6 to 11 named storms this year, of which 3 to 6 could become hurricanes — tropical cyclones with maximum sustained surface winds greater than 74 mph. And chances are, only one or two of those hurricanes will grow as strong as a Category 3 (sustained winds of 111 to 129 mph) – or none at all.
A slower hurricane season, however, doesn’t mean the storms that develop won’t be major events.
“It really only takes that one event to create something potentially catastrophic,” said Faye Barthold, meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Upton.
Superstorm Sandy, which crippled communities across the Northeast and Long Island, was not even a hurricane when it made landfall on October 29, 2012. And Hurricane Andrew was one of only seven named storms when it caused significant damage and loss of life in South Florida in 1992.
“It only takes one hurricane or tropical storm making landfall in your community to significantly disrupt your life,” FEMA Deputy Administrator Joseph Nimmich said in the NOAA press release. “Everyone should take action now to prepare themselves and their families for hurricanes and powerful storms.”
Thank El Niño
The below-normal forecast is in large part due to El Niño, a natural phenomenon that occurs when a band of warm ocean water develops in the Pacific. El Niño reduces both the number of Atlantic hurricanes and their intensity, because of the way El Niño affects wind patterns over the Caribbean and Atlantic. El Niño increases wind shear, which helps to prevent tropical disturbances from developing into hurricanes.
“El Niño is the biggest player in this forecast,” Barthold said. “The ways that El Niño interacts with global temperature patterns and sea surface temperatures determines how many storms we’re going to get. And this year, it doesn’t look like we’ll have that many.”
“El Niño may also intensify as the season progresses,” Gerry Bell, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at the NOAA, said in the forecast. “[It is] expected to have its greatest influence during the peak months of the season.”
An updated forecast for the Atlantic hurricane season will be released in early August, which is usually just before the season’s peak. The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 through Nov. 30.
2015 hurricane names & how they’re picked
The names given to hurricanes originate from lists maintained by the World Meteorological Organization. This year’s named storms will be chosen from this list: Ana, Bill, Claudette, Danny, Erika, Fred, Grace, Henri, Ida, Joaquin, Kate, Larry, Mindy, Nicholas, Odette, Peter, Rose, Sam, Teresa, Victor, Wanda.
There are six lists of names used in rotation and recycled every six years. Storms that are so deadly or costly “that the future use of its name on a different storm would be inappropriate for reasons of sensitivity” are retired from the lists. The names Sandy, Irene and Katrina have been retired from use, for example. Seventy-eight names, used for storms dating back to 1954, have been retired.
The practice of naming hurricanes dates back hundreds of years — hurricanes in the West Indies were once named for saints, for example — but in modern times the use of names was adopted to alleviate confusion and ease communications about the storm, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Beginning in the early 1950s, hurricanes in the U.S. were named solely for women, a practice which ended with the 1979 Atlantic hurricane season, when men’s names were first used. The first male name for an Atlantic hurricane was Bob, a hurricane that hit the Gulf Coast. (A subsequent storm named Bob in 1991 was the costliest hurricane in New England history. “Bob” was then retired from use.)
