We’re Floridians, and summer — at least what it says on the calendar — is coming.
And, as June 1 approaches, so is the Atlantic hurricane season. And just like it was last year, with 21 named storms, researchers are expecting another busy season this year, based on atmospheric conditions.
The team at Colorado State University, the nation’s preeminent voices on tropical weather, cite the likely absence of El Niño as a primary factor in predicting 19 named storms in its early April prediction set.
Tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures are near their long-term averages, while Caribbean and subtropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures are warmer than their longterm averages. The warmer Caribbean and eastern part of the subtropical Atlantic also favor an active 2022 Atlantic hurricane season, the CSU team said.
The researchers do not currently anticipate El Niño conditions, which feature upper-level westerly winds across the Caribbean into the tropical Atlantic that inhibit forming storms.
Of the 19 storms, the CSU Tropical Meteorology Project team expects nine to become hurricanes and four to reach major hurricane strength (Saffir/Simpson Category 3-5) with sustained winds of 111 miles per hour or greater.
“So far, the 2022 hurricane season is exhibiting characteristics similar to 1996, 2000, 2001, 2008, 2012 and 2021. Our analog seasons generally exhibited near- to somewhat above-normal Atlantic hurricane activity,” said Phil Klotzbach, research scientist in the CSU Department of Atmospheric Science and lead author of the report.
The team predicts that 2022 hurricane activity will be about 130 percent of the average season from 1991-2020 — a period that’s already been busy on average. By comparison, 2021’s hurricane activity was about 120 percent of the average season. In 2021, eight named storms made U.S. landfalls, including two hurricanes, the worst being Category 4 Hurricane Ida which pummeled the Louisiana coast, then brought devastating flooding to the mid-Atlantic and northeast U.S. as a weakening low-pressure storm system.
The CSU team also includes the probability of at least one major hurricane making landfall, and in 2022 they’re higher than average: 71 percent for the entire U.S. coastline (average is 52 percent), 47 percent for the East Coast including the Florida peninsula (31), 46 percent for the Gulf Coast (30) and 60 percent for the Caribbean (42).
So what does this mean for those here in Osceola County, who likely remember the wind damage, flooding and power outages of Hurricane Irma in 2017, or the conga line of storms in 2004?
There’s good news — there’s time, like the whole month of May, to plan and prepare, like you/we should do every year.
The state of Florida will hold it’s annual Disaster Preparedness Sales Tax Holiday from May 28 to June 10, when disaster preparedness supplies are sales tax-free. The list of items, part of a tax-relief package passed by the Florida Senate, includes:
Flashlights and lanterns costing $40 or less; radios costing $50 or less; tarps costing $100 or less; coolers costing $60 or less; batteries costing $50 or less; smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, and carbon monoxide detectors costing $70 or less; and, generators costing $1,000 or less. The holiday also includes a number of items related to the safe evacuation of household pets. Information from the
Colorado State Tropical Meteorology Project was used in this report.
