Citing above-average subtropical eastern Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea surface temperatures as a primary factor, the tropical forecast research team at Colorado State University continues to predict an above-average 2025 hurricane season.
The team predicts 17 named storms — which would take us through the ‘R’ name — and nine hurricanes, with four major (Saffir/Simpson Category 3, 4 or 5) with sustained winds of 111 miles per hour or greater) storms.
“When the waters in the eastern subtropical Atlantic are warmer than normal in the late spring, they tend to force a weaker subtropical high and weaker associated winds blowing across the tropical Atlantic,” the team’s release said Wednesday. “These conditions are anticipated to lead to a continuation of above-average water temperatures across most of the tropical Atlantic for the peak of the 2025 hurricane season.”
The report gave the entire U.S. coastline a 51% chance of a landfalling major hurricane (the statistical average is 43%), 26% for the East Coast and Florida peninsula (21%), 33% from % for the Gulf Coast from the Florida panhandle westward to Brownsville, Texas (27%) and 56% for the Caribbean (47%).
Many of the metrics in Wednesday’s update were the same as the CSU team’s April 3 forecast, the initial one for 2025.
The chances of El Niño conditions, which help quell storms as they form, are a low 13% (or 1 in 7), the CSU team reported.
The team bases its forecasts on a statistical model, as well as four models that simulate recent history and predictions of the state of the atmosphere during the coming hurricane season.
“So far, the 2025 hurricane season is exhibiting characteristics similar to 1996, 1999, 2008, 2011, and 2021,” said Phil Klotzbach, a senior research scientist in the Department of Atmospheric Science at CSU and lead author of the report. “Our analog seasons had anywhere from above-average to hyperactive Atlantic hurricane activity.”
The team predicts that 2025 hurricane activity will be about 125% of the average season from 1991–2020. By comparison, activity in the 2024 season — which spawned hurricanes like Debby and the deadly Helene and Milton — was about 130% of the average season.
This is the 42nd year that CSU has issued an Atlantic forecast. The late Professor Bill Gray originated the seasonal forecasts at CSU and launched the report in 1984. He continued to author them until his death in 2016. The authors of this year’s forecast are Phil Klotzbach, Professor Michael Bell and Research Scientist Levi Silvers.
As always, the researchers caution coastal residents to take proper precautions.
“It takes only one storm near you to make this an active season for you,” Bell said.
The CSU team will issue forecast updates on July 9 and Aug. 6
