Florida - Wednesday May 31, 2023: The 2023 Hurricane season is upon us. From June 1 through November 30th, officials advise residents to be alert, follow the forecasts and be prepared.
NOAA has predicted a near-normal 2023 Atlantic Hurricane Season, but during a briefing for reporters Wednesday National Hurricane Center Director Micheal Brennan said that’s no cause to celebrate. "There is nothing good about a near normal hurricane season. That’s the activity we had across the basin last year and we had a catastrophic hurricane landfall in southwest Florida with Ian, we had Fiona affect Puerto Rico, we had hurricane landfall in Florida in November with Nicole. So, we’re expecting a busy season.”
12 to 17 named storms, 5 to 9 becoming hurricanes and 1 to 4 major hurricanes, normal forecast numbers maybe, but fraught with uncertainty because of competing forces says Brennan. An El Nino pattern, which tends disrupt hurricane formation, will meet up with a number of other factors that stimulate storms.
“There is uncertainty in how El Nino is going to evolve. We’ve had major hurricanes in El Nino years in otherwise very quiet hurricane seasons. But there are other factors in the Atlantic basin that would suggest a very busy year, very warm sea surface temperatures, weaker low-level easterly flow, African monsoon that’s more active than typical. So, these forces are going to fight it out.”
And as we learned last year, the biggest threat is storm surge.
"Storm surge has the potential to kill the largest number of people in a single day of any other hazards, as we saw in Ian last year," said Brennan. "Pay attention to the storm surge watch and warning. It’s the most dire warning the National Weather Service can issue, for any of the hurricane hazards. And it’s really there to tell you that you are at risk of life-threatening inundation.”
And don’t let your guard down if we have another long stretch of no activity like last year, “Just because we have a quiet stretch of a few weeks, or even a month, doesn’t mean hurricane season is over. The threat is there all 5 months of the hurricane season.”
