AccuWeather predicts an active hurricane season

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Lead Hurricane Expert Alex DaSilva was live on the AccuWeather Network to talk about the exclusive AccuWeather forecast for the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season.

Transcript

00:00Let's talk about the forecast that was just issued to the public here this morning.

00:07Yeah, the work doesn't stop during the off-season.

00:09We've been busy all winter preparing the hurricane forecast for this upcoming season.

00:13So, for this year, we're forecasting 13 to 18 named storms across the Atlantic Basin,

00:197 to 10 of which we expect to become hurricanes,

00:22and then of those 7 to 10, 3 to 5 major hurricanes.

00:25That's Category 3 or above, but the number that everybody wants to know about,

00:28how many impacts for the United States.

00:31Last year, we saw 6, a very, very destructive year.

00:34This year, we're forecasting 3 to 6 hits on the United States.

00:37So, overall, not as busy as last year, but still at or above the historical averages.

00:44All right, Alex, everybody wants to know, what goes in to making this forecast?

00:51Yeah, there's many factors we look at, and we'll go one by one here.

00:54Number one factor that we look for is this transition from La Nina to probably neutral for most of the season.

01:00Right now, the water's in the eastern Pacific, a little bit cooler than average,

01:03but during the whole entire season, we're expecting things to be right around neutral.

01:08But a lot of times, those neutral patterns can be very, very close to La Ninas,

01:13and when you see that, that indicates lower than average wind shear across the Atlantic Basin,

01:18which can allow for more hurricanes to form.

01:22All right, also, let's talk about this.

01:24With that neutral phase, something that you told me about that I was unaware of,

01:29you tend to get more waves coming off Africa, which means more opportunity for storms.

01:37Yeah, it's kind of a delicate balance, because a lot of storms will come off of Africa,

01:42and the beefier that they are, the better chance they have to develop.

01:45And during a neutral year, we can sometimes get these strong storms to come off of Africa and then develop,

01:51but if they're too strong, they can actually bring in some dry air with them, so it's a delicate balance here.

01:56If we get these storms to be a little bit too strong, they can actually bring a lot of African dust in,

02:01and that would actually be a good thing, because that would actually choke off some of those waves emerging from Africa.

02:06Now, last year at this time, we were looking at exceptionally warm water in the Atlantic Basin,

02:12not quite as warm as it was this time last year, Alex,

02:16but still, the water temperature anomalies are higher.

02:20Yeah, and this is concerning, because everywhere where you see orange and yellow, that's above average water temperatures,

02:25and if it stays this way, which we think it will for the next couple of months all the way through hurricane season,

02:31that we're talking about a lot of fuel in the Atlantic there for development,

02:36and it's not only about the sea surface, it's how deep it goes where you have very deep warm water.

02:42Now, let's take a look at this. Based on the pattern and previous years that have some of the same factors,

02:48you're already coming up with a landfall forecast.

02:51Yeah, we took a look at 12 years, 12 years that had similar atmospheric conditions to this year,

02:56and we plotted where those tropical storms and hurricanes made landfall, and you can see those denoted here by those dots.

03:01The circled areas are where we see clustering, and these are the areas that we're thinking have an above average chance of impacts,

03:07but if you live in the northeast, you see that red dot in New Jersey, that was Hurricane Sandy.

03:12We definitely don't want anybody across any of the coastlines to let their guard down.

03:16AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva. Alex, thanks for joining us again on AccuWeather Early.

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