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Report
2024 hurricane season shatters records
AccuWeather
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12/2/2024
AccuWeather hurricane experts predicted a supercharged 2024 season. What arrived was a deadly, explosive and historic year. Here's a look back.
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Transcript
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00:00
It's a total mess, people have been swept away, business have been ruined, lives have
00:09
been lost.
00:10
It's been flooded before, but this is completely insane.
00:13
There was probably 12 or so houses out on Eazell Beach that are no longer there.
00:18
We don't know where we go from here.
00:21
This season had trouble written all over it right from the beginning.
00:25
Unfortunately, I must say the news isn't good.
00:28
No, it's not good.
00:29
We expect an above average number of named storms.
00:33
We saw what was going to happen and that's why we use such strong language to alert people
00:38
where we forecast an extraordinarily active season, a supercharged season with 20 to 25
00:45
named storms and 4 to 6 U.S. impacts.
00:49
Three words, Gulf of Mexico.
00:54
That's how I'm going to remember the hurricane season.
00:56
Why?
00:57
Because that's where we had all the impacts.
00:59
We had five hurricane impacts in the Gulf of Mexico, including the upper Texas coast
01:06
with Barrel.
01:07
Then we had Debbie, then we had Francine, then we had Helene, and then we had Milton.
01:14
When you look at the season and you see the amount of damage and total economic loss,
01:20
we're talking about $500 billion.
01:23
So much of it was water damage from a tremendous storm surge that occurred during many storms
01:29
right at the coastline and near the coastline, and then significant inland flooding.
01:36
The season had started active, then we had that long lull, but this year, quiet.
01:43
In fact, it was the longest stretch since 1968 where no new named storms had developed
01:51
for a several week time period.
01:54
AccuWeather hurricane experts issued our first track and intensity forecast for Francine
01:59
24 hours before the government and any other source to provide people, businesses, and
02:04
governments with valuable extra advance notice.
02:08
Landfall of Hurricane Francine occurring right when the AccuWeather forecast projected it.
02:14
AccuWeather was also the only source to most accurately forecast that Francine would intensify
02:20
into a Category 2 hurricane prior to making landfall across Louisiana.
02:28
Helene was a truly historic storm.
02:30
It will go down as one of the most disastrous hurricanes in U.S. history.
02:36
The sheer size of Helene and how it intensified didn't surprise us because we anticipated
02:43
that was going to happen.
02:45
A major hurricane continuing to intensify by all indications and we're concerned about
02:50
a variety of serious catastrophic impacts right at the coast and inland in the coming
02:57
days.
02:58
We were the only source to call Helene a catastrophic flooding disaster across parts of the southern
03:05
Appalachians.
03:06
A catastrophic risk.
03:08
That just shows you the urgency and how concerned we are about how dangerous this flooding situation
03:13
can get across portions of the southern Appalachians where rain may fall at two to four inches
03:19
per hour.
03:20
It's too fast, too furious in the steep terrain.
03:23
We're talking about roads and bridges that may be washed out and in fact communities
03:28
which may be isolated for days.
03:31
We use that wording specifically to help people, businesses, and governments understand just
03:38
how dangerous and how unique and how serious the situation was going to be inland.
03:45
It resembled a tsunami that just knocked everything down in its path.
03:50
We lost everything, family, friends, homes, our jobs, everything, our animals.
03:56
We have nothing.
03:57
We got family members floating down the river.
04:00
It's a mess man.
04:01
There's trees down.
04:02
There's water everywhere.
04:03
Water's off.
04:04
We don't have any power.
04:06
Nobody has cash.
04:07
You can't buy anything.
04:08
You can't get any gas, so it's a disaster.
04:12
Having two major hurricane landfalls is very rare in the United States coastline within
04:18
just a matter of a couple of weeks.
04:20
It was slow.
04:22
It took its time.
04:25
We sounded the alarm on this well in advance as well, but we were always pretty convinced
04:30
that once again it was going to be the Florida Peninsula that would bear the brunt of yet
04:35
another hurricane.
04:45
Our thoughts are with the so many people whose lives were changed forever.
04:50
These storms have cost hundreds of lives, tragically cost hundreds of lives and impacted
04:56
thousands of families.
04:58
The number of storms that we had outside of the heart of the hurricane season is something
05:04
else.
05:06
So despite the fact that there have been so many negative aspects of the season, we know
05:11
that the AccuWeather forecast once again saved many lives and helped people best prepare.
05:18
That's what we do here at AccuWeather.
05:20
That's our mission and that's what we'll do on the next storm as well.
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