If you’re reading this newsletter, you can count yourself among the savvier hurricane enthusiasts. Many of you subscribe to the daily newsletter because you worry about your family and home during hurricane season. Some of you enjoy the inside baseball of tropical meteorology and forecasting the most powerful storms on Earth. Still, others like staying ahead of the next threat because – let’s face it – none of us like surprises during hurricane season.
Whatever your interest in hurricanes, you probably also see the daily hurricane chatter on social media. You’ve heard – either from this newsletter or elsewhere – of the tug-of-war between the record warm Atlantic, favoring storm activity this season, and the building El Niño in the eastern Pacific threatening to fend off Atlantic hurricanes.
You may have even staked your claim in the active vs. inactive season debate. Of course, it’s not that cut-and-dried. It never is.
El Niño or not, extraordinarily warm Atlantic or not – we will have hurricanes this season. In the modern record (since 1914 to be exact), there’s not been an Atlantic hurricane season without a hurricane. Hurricanes happen – even strong and destructive hurricanes – even during inactive hurricane seasons and even in El Niño years.
The 1983 hurricane season began unremarkably – two paltry tropical depressions forming in late July and petering out before garnering a name. It also ended exceptionally below average, with the lowest activity of any hurricane season since the Great Depression. But for residents of Houston, the 1983 hurricane season was anything but quiet.
The first named storm of 1983 and the only Category 3 or stronger Atlantic hurricane that year took aim on southeast Texas and the growing Houston metropolitan area in mid-August. Hurricane Alicia swept through Galveston Bay with a 12-foot storm surge and tore through downtown Houston, becoming the costliest U.S. hurricane at the time. For Houston-Galveston, the least active hurricane season in over half a century was meaningless because of one bad hurricane.
Like 1983, 1992 also saw a very inactive hurricane season. And like 1992, only one Category 3 or stronger hurricane formed over the 6-month hurricane season. For South Floridians, that hurricane was a storm that forever changed their lives and the landscape of Dade County.
In an otherwise underwhelming year, the Atlantic witnessed one of the most intense hurricanes on record and, at the time, the costliest hurricane to ever strike the United States.
Both Andrew and Alicia came during summers following a waning wintertime El Niño. But even in the midst of emerging El Niños, like the one this year, the U.S. has seen its fair share of big hurricanes.
Billion Dollar Betsy – the only Category 3 or stronger hurricane of the 1965 hurricane season – darkened the homes across South Florida before becoming a once-in-a-generation storm for residents of southeast Louisiana. Betsy was the costliest U.S. hurricane at the time and the first hurricane to exceed a billion dollars in damage – and it happened during a strong El Niño like the one possible this hurricane season.
The lesson with each of these below average hurricane seasons is that in any given year, especially during August, September and early October, powerful and devastating hurricanes can happen.
El Niño may often reduce the overall number of Atlantic hurricanes and has been shown to lessen impacts along the Florida peninsula and U.S East Coast, but it isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card for hurricane season. We can still pay a heavy fine during El Niño years or in otherwise inactive seasons when the wrong hurricane hits.
The hurricane season is quiet until it isn’t, so always have a plan for you and your family in advance, regardless of seasonal forecasts.
For this week, the Atlantic will remain mostly quiet. Don has reorganized into a borderline tropical storm over the open waters of the North Atlantic, where it’s expected to stay into the weekend.
We’ll continue to follow the tropical wave moving westward this week from Africa, but for now, it poses no immediate threat to land.