Hurricane Preparedness Week and outlook for 2025

The US National Weather Service is doing “Hurricane Preparedness Week” this week. If you have lived on the southeastern US, Caribbean, or Gulf of Whatever coasts the last few years you probably don’t need any reminders, especially given media hype. Nevertheless, this is the time to review your plans, and make sure your insurance is up to speed, especially flood insurance. Remember that once a storm is declared, insurance policies are “frozen,” and flood insurance has a 30 day waiting period, so take care of it now because when a storm is on the way it’s too late. And remember that in the US your homeowner’s policy does not include damage from floods! You have to buy a separate policy from NFIP.

In the past the FEMA web site, ready.gov, had good checklists for getting ready for various hazards. The site is undergoing a lot of changes and there are some dead links and other weirdness going on. To quote the warning banner, “Ready.gov is being updated to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders. Thank you for your patience and understanding.” Politics in America is so tribal and nasty these days I won’t comment further on that. If any of you want to discuss intelligently one way or the other feel free, but take any flame wars elsewhere.

No doubt you’ve seen forecasts for the upcoming season. For the most part these are clickbait. All we can do at this point is have a very general idea of some of the factors that lead to hurricane formation, strengthening, and movement. The problem, as I have often pointed out, is that the details from day to day matter, a lot. Things that can’t really be forecast more than 10-15 days in advance like middle atmo humidity, wind shear, dust off of Africa, etc. have as much to say about storm formation as the big picture. But, for what it’s worth, here is what that big picture looks like …

There are two major factors that contribute to hurricane formation, intensity, and movement. The first is the sea surface temperature (SST). During the core of the hurricane season SST rarely prohibits storms from forming, but plays a vital role in how strong they can become. The last few years the Atlantic has been extremely warm. Looking at the peak of hurricane season (September), eight of the warmest September SST’s in the last 171 years were since 2015. All of the top ten were since 2005. All of the top 20 were since 1999. This level of heat adds at least one, and in some cases two Saffir-Simpson categories to a mature storm in favorable conditions.

This year started quite warm, with the January SST being the second warmest on record. The Atlantic has cooled off since February – but April is still in the top ten at number seven. This year’s season should stay in the top ten, meaning there will be plenty of energy out there.

The second big factor is the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The ENSO cycle has a big influence on hurricanes because during ‘El Nino” years winds are unfavorable for hurricane formation. La Nina years the winds are usually extremely favorable, while “Neutral” years are not, as you might think, in the middle, but remain somewhat favorable (but not nearly so much as La Nina years).

The current forecast is for “ENSO-neutral” conditions to persist through the early part of the season, and there is a better than a 50% chance it will last through the end of the year:

If the ENSO state changes, odds favor it to change for the worse (from a hurricane risk standpoint) and become La Nina. All told, in terms of the number of storms, there is a 75% chance of an above average year this year.

Some folks are starting to do what Mark Johnson at UCF and I were doing twenty years ago and estimating the probabilities for individual locations. For Savannah, Georgia (37 miles south of Frogmore), the odds of seeing hurricane force winds from a hurricane this season are about 1 in 12 (8.3%). For Frogmore itself, about 1 in 10 (10%), and further south a bit less (1 in 16 or 6.3% in Brunswick). Further afield from the munificent glow of Frogmore, Miami has about a 1 in 10 chance, most of the Gulf coast around 15%, Hatteras about a 20% chance. New York City has about a 3% chance, Cape Code about a 4% chance, Nova Scotia around a 5% chance. In the Caribbean, Puerto Rico and the USVI are also is around a 10% chance. In total, most places have slightly to somewhat above average chance of seeing impacts from a hurricane than the long term average, but nothing to trigger an immediate change of underwear.

So what does all that mean? Unless you are in the capital markets and placing multi-billion dollar bets on the insurance or commodities markets, probably not much. Even if you knew the exact number of storms you still wouldn’t know where they are going or how strong they would be when you get there. So you should do the same thing every year: prepare for a possible storm by having a good plan, stock up on non-perishable supplies you might need, know what stuff you get about five days before a possible landfall, and making sure your insurance coverage is adequate.

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My plan for the site this year is pretty simple. I’m no longer doing natural hazards research, but I’ll be monitoring the storms as usual. I’ll post when something looks interesting or dangerous, but as long time followers know I don’t jump on every wobble, forecast model update, or random post by some inebriated ungulate that goes viral. Basically I do one post a day if there is a live (or strong potential) storm, then twice a day when it gets to about 3 days before landfall. You can support all this, and guilt me in to posting more, by visiting the about/donate page (click to teleport). The best way to get updates is to subscribe …