Forecasters Predict Busy Hurricane Season

Forecasters are anticipating another busy hurricane season for the Atlantic Basin in 2020, on the heels of an active 2019 season.

Led by Dan Kottlowksi, AccuWeather’s top hurricane expert, meteorologists released a 2020 Atlantic hurricane forecast. Kottlowksi’s team is calling for 14 to 18 tropical storms during this upcoming season, which runs from June 1 through November 30. Of those storms, seven to nine are forecast to become hurricanes, and two to four are predicted to strengthen into major hurricanes.

“It’s going to be an above-normal season,” Kottlowski said. “On a normal year, we have around 12 storms, six hurricanes and roughly three major hurricanes.”

The 2019 season marked the fourth consecutive year of above-average activity in the basin and was tied with 1969 for the fourth most-active hurricane season on record.

Featuring hurricanes Dorian, Lorenzo and Humberto as well as Tropical Storm Imelda, the 2019 season resulted in 18 storms overall and caused more than $11 billion in damage.

As part of the method for formulating this season’s predictions, forecasters have drawn comparisons to previous years with comparable weather conditions — also known as analog years.

This year, forecasters predict two to four impacts are in the cards for the country.

Early in the season, meteorologists will keep a watchful eye on parts of the Caribbean Sea and areas east of the Bahamas, where the water is already very warm. Water temperatures in the Caribbean have already hit 80 degrees Fahrenheit in late March, according to data from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) station.

Kottlowski and a team of long-range meteorologists predicted last April that there would be 12 to 14 named storms in the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season, including tropical storms and hurricanes. His team’s annual forecast also called for five to seven hurricanes, and six materialized.

Kottlowski’s team predicted two to four of those storms would become major hurricanes — and three of them did just that. The 2019 forecast also called for two to four named storms to make landfall, and four of the storms came ashore on the U.S. coast.