By Jim Turner
News Service of Florida
With insurers, utilities and emergency-management officials bracing for the coming months, experts continue to predict a highly active hurricane season for Florida and other areas of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration points to warm ocean waters and forecasts up to 25 named storms, with up to 13 reaching hurricane strength and four to seven major hurricanes packing Category 3 or stronger winds.
Mark Wool, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Tallahassee office, said there is high confidence in the latest forecast, which doesn’t predict paths of storms or potential landfalls.
“All of the ingredients are there. We still have those near-record warm waters out in the Atlantic tropical-development areas that were there last year, and we no longer have (the climate pattern known as) El Nino,” Wool said. “We actually like to have an El Nino during hurricane season, because it increases wind shear over the development areas.”
Officials also have growing concern that rapid intensification of storms is becoming more frequent, resulting in less time for preparations and evacuations.
“While climate change as science doesn’t necessarily indicate we’re going to be getting more tropical cyclones on average, we are predicting that there will be more of the major hurricanes and more category 4s and 5s,” Wool added. “And that this rapid intensification, which has been on the increase, will happen more frequently.”
The six-month season officially begins June 1, but a disturbance
Florida State University Climatologist David Zierden said the forecasts of a busy season haven’t been a surprise because of the ocean temperatures.
“The latest analysis I saw is that sea surface temperatures in the main development region are as warm as they normally are in mid-August right now,” Zierden told reporters in May. “That’s what we’re looking at. The sea surface temperatures in that region were record warm last year. And we’re even above that going into this hurricane season.”
The NOAA forecast Thursday was similar to a Colorado State University Department of Atmospheric Science forecast of 23 named storms and 11 hurricanes. Experts at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts & Sciences, meanwhile, forecast an eye-opening 33 named storms.
The 2023 season was the fourth most-active on record with 20 named storms, including seven that reached hurricane strength and three major storms. In late August, Hurricane Idalia made landfall in Taylor County as a Category 3 storm before tearing through parts of rural North Florida.
From 1991 to 2020 the Atlantic averaged 14.4 storms a year, with an average of 7.2 reaching hurricane strength, which makes the so-high predictions from experts so eye-popping.
Patricia Born, a professor of risk management and insurance at Florida State University, told reporters May 16 that changes have helped the property-insurance market, such as legislation that bolstered insurers and backing from reinsurers. Entering hurricane season, Born said Floridians can get coverage from private insurers or through the state’s Citizens Property Insurance Corporation.
“So, it’s a good thing to know, from a social point of view, that we don’t have a huge gap with people being uninsured going into the season,” Born said. “I’m pretty optimistic that one storm is not going to kill us. A couple of storms may be a little bit more of an issue,” Born said. “If this is a season where we have two or three hurricanes, we’re going to be facing some concerns.”
