Weather watchers look at early indicators for hurricane season
The 2025 Hurricane Season is now less than 100 days away, with signs suggesting a slightly busier than average season.
The Weather Channel said that while it was still too early to gauge how active the season would be, there were indicators that could give a hint as to what might come.
“The first is the status of El Niño Southern Oscillation,” the Weather Channel wrote. “The status of ENSO can often stack the deck towards being more or less active.
“This year, however, that deck hasn’t been stacked in either direction. The good news is that the expectation of a neutral year might bring a less-active year.
“The second factor is water temperatures. As has been the case for the better part of the last decade, water temperatures are running above average across the basin, but also slightly cooler than last year’s scorcher.”
The names of storms for this year’s hurricane season will largely match that of the 2019 season, with the exception that Dorian has been replaced with Dexter.
Dorian was formally retired as a hurricane name after Hurricane Dorian battered the Bahamas as a Category 5 Hurricane in August 2019, causing widespread devastation and numerous deaths.
This year’s list includes Andrea, Barry, Chantal, Dexter, Erin, Fernand, Gabrielle, Humberto, Imelda, Jerry, Karen, Lorenzo, Melissa, Nestor, Olga, Pablo, Rebekah, Sebastien, Tanya, Van and Wendy.
Any additional storms would have their names selected from a supplemental list.
The Weather Channel wrote that areas of the basin become viable for storm development when their temperature reaches about 80F, which typically occurs when the hurricane season begins.
“The Caribbean is already warm enough to sustain tropical activity, but we have no sources for tropical development there,” the outlet said.
“The Caribbean, Gulf and western Atlantic are typically the first spots we watch for tropical development because those areas warm up the earliest.
“The Gulf is several degrees warmer than average for this time of the year, and if sustained for several months, that could lead to more development.
“The Gulf is more susceptible to temperature changes in the spring due to the infiltration of cold fronts and blasts of Arctic air, so this warm pocket may not stick around.”
The 2025 hurricane season formally starts on June 1 and ends on November 30, but storms have been known to form before or after that period.
In a preseason forecast delivered in December, Tropical Storm Risk said it anticipated a nearly average season with 15 named storms, including seven hurricanes, three of which were expected to become major hurricanes of at least Category 3 strength.
However, the body acknowledged that there were still “large uncertainties”.
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