Another above-normal hurricane season forecast this year, NOAA says

A 10th consecutive above-average hurricane season is forecast in the Atlantic basin this year, with warm waters and potentially storm-friendly climate patterns expected to produce as many as 19 tropical storms, including six to 10 hurricanes, government scientists said Thursday.
Half of those hurricanes could reach “major” strength, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in its official outlook for the 2025 storm season, which begins June 1.
The forecast underscored the dangers of a historically active stretch of Atlantic hurricane activity, and of how much rising global temperatures, caused mostly by humans burning fossil fuels, can energize storms into rapidly intensifying threats to the coast.
Studies have estimated that climate change is warming waters across the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea and making storms such as last year’s Beryl, Helene and Milton more likely to rapidly intensify.
But some scientists fear the country is meanwhile less prepared for such storms than it was a year ago. Early retirements and the firings of probationary workers have depleted a NOAA workforce that previously numbered about 12,000, but is now closer to 10,000, said Rick Spinrad, who served as the agency’s chief scientist under President Barack Obama and its administrator under President Joe Biden.
That includes staffing shortages on the order of 10 to 30% in key divisions, including staff who carry out Hurricane Hunter flights into the heart of storms, who launch weather balloons at local National Weather Service forecasting offices, and who work on the sophisticated models used to predict storms’ intensity and track.
“Even if we have an average season, I think we’re going to be stretching the limit of (NOAA’s) capabilities,” Spinrad said.
But NOAA officials stressed the ways technology is helping meteorologists to more accurately forecast storms’ track and intensity and has improved warnings around hazards including storm surge, when which has historically been the deadliest threat associated with a hurricane.
“Now more than ever, NOAA is prepared for what the hurricane season my bring,” said Laura Grimm, NOAA’s acting administrator, at an event announcing the forecast in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
Atlantic hurricane season begins June 1 and its first named storm typically forms by June 20, with the last 10 seasons all featuring at least one storm before that date. An average Atlantic hurricane season features 14 named storms, including seven hurricanes, three of them major hurricanes.
A storm earns a name – this season’s list begins with Andrea – when it has sustained winds of at least 39 mph. To become at least a Category 1 hurricane, it must have winds of at least 74 mph, while tropical cyclones with sustained winds of at least 111 mph are considered major storms of Category 3, 4 or 5.
NOAA’s forecast is consistent with other seasonal outlooks for hurricane activity that suggest that there may be slightly more storms than normal this year but perhaps fewer than last year, when five major storms developed, including three that made catastrophic landfalls in the U.S.: Beryl, Helene and Milton.
A key preseason forecast Colorado State University scientists issued last month called for 17 named storms, including nine hurricanes, four of them reaching “major” strength. AccuWeather predicted 13 to 18 storms, while the Weather Channel is calling for 19 named storms. The United Kingdom’s meteorological office is expecting around 16 named storms, including nine hurricanes, with four reaching major strength.
The outlook is in large part tied to changes in ocean temperatures. While waters in the part of the Atlantic where many storms form are warmer than average, they aren’t as warm as last year, which featured swaths of record ocean heat.
But there are still signs that the season could get off to an active start, with weekly outlooks suggesting the first opportunity for a storm in early-to-mid June. An early season heat dome recently caused sea temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea to warm well above average.
Meanwhile, waters have cooled in the Pacific Ocean, a shift resembling the climate pattern La Niña that can cause winds to be more conducive to storm development in the Atlantic. La Niña is known to encourage Atlantic tropical storm activity because it tends to encourage atmospheric circulation and wind patterns that allow for tropical storms to spin up and organize more readily over the Atlantic basin.
The climate pattern and its better known counterpart, El Niño, stem from a zone of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean where unusually warm or cool waters have cascading impacts on weather patterns around the world.
La Niña ended this spring, according to NOAA scientists, and they now estimate about 50 percent or greater odds that so-called “neutral” conditions – without La Niña or El Niño – will last through the fall. Neutral conditions can make it more difficult for meteorologists to predict longer-term, seasonal trends.
But while it’s uncertain whether the recent patterns over the Pacific will continue and culminate in a full-fledged La Niña later this year, the latest trends suggest that wouldn’t be a huge stretch. NOAA estimates greater than 40 percent chances La Niña could return sometime in the final few months of the year.
Even if La Niña doesn’t arrive before hurricane season ends Nov. 30, a La Niña-like pattern could still drive a lot of storm activity.
A year ago, record-hot oceans and a developing La Niña prompted NOAA to issue predictions of one of the most active Atlantic storm seasons on record. The middle of the season ended up mysteriously quiet, largely attributed to the influence of an unusual African monsoon season, which typically produces atmospheric disturbances that later become Atlantic cyclones.
But the 2024 storm season nonetheless ended up being considered hyperactive, in large part because of the intensity Beryl, Helene and Milton. It was the 11th Atlantic hurricane season since 1995 that, by NOAA’s calculations of a metric known as accumulated cyclone energy, was deemed “extremely active,” according to Colorado State hurricane forecaster Philip Klotzbach.
There hasn’t been a below-average Atlantic hurricane season since 2015, according to the World Meteorological Organization.