AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva was live on the AccuWeather Network on May 21 to discuss AccuWeather's 2025 hurricane season forecast. The Atlantic hurricane season begins on June 1.
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00:00All right, joining us right now is one of the forefront meteorologists, excuse me, in our tropical, in our hurricane section here, meteorologist Alex DeSilva.
00:11And Alex, you know, you guys were busy last year, and again, we did everything we could to make everybody as safe as possible.
00:18But there's no rest for the weary, the hurricane season not far away.
00:24Let's talk about the upcoming season and what we're forecasting.
00:27Yeah, a little bit over a week away from the start of the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season.
00:32And, yep, we're forecasting another busy season in the Atlantic.
00:3613 to 18 named storms with 7 to 10 of those becoming hurricanes.
00:41Now, the number everyone really cares about, how many are going to impact the United States?
00:45We're forecasting 3 to 6 to impact the United States directly.
00:49Last year, we saw 6, so another busy season looks like it's on tap.
00:53Now, when you're making this long-range forecast, there are a couple of keys to the forecast, some things you're looking at that give you clues to what the season's going to be like.
01:04Yeah, we look way out in the Pacific a lot of times to see if it's going to be an El Nino or a La Nina pattern.
01:10And we're going to be going into that in the next couple minutes here.
01:12But it's going to be a neutral phase, it looks like, for basically the majority of the season here.
01:17And what that means is that the Atlantic is still going to be active.
01:21The research has shown that La Nina years and neutral years typically yield near to above average seasons for tropical development in the Atlantic.
01:29And when you say that it's a neutral phase, you can explain that by looking at the current sea surface temperature anomalies of what we call the La Nina-El Nino region.
01:43Yeah, so we have to jump way out into the Pacific.
01:45You can see south of Hawaii there.
01:47You can see Hawaii kind of in the top left of your screen here.
01:49So we're looking south of Hawaii in that box.
01:52Now, if the area in that box is a lot of blue shading, so cooler than average temperatures, that would indicate a La Nina.
01:58If that area is full of red and orange, that's an El Nino.
02:01And you can see there's about equal between blue and light yellow there.
02:07So it's neutral.
02:08So the water temperatures in that area are about normal, about average for this time of the year.
02:13All right, and when we take a look at the season, let's explain that phase because it's not like it's a steady state.
02:20It's going to be changing, we believe, as we go through the season.
02:23Yeah, it can be.
02:25So early in the season, like we just mentioned, we're expected to be in a neutral phase.
02:28So about 100% chance.
02:29You can see that left pie chart fully grayed out here, indicating the phase of ENSO.
02:34So we're fully grayed out, 100% chance of neutral early in the season.
02:39But the middle pie chart is the middle of the season.
02:42So you can see the other colors starting to grow a little bit.
02:45You can see the blue, you know, maybe taking up around 25%, 30% there.
02:48And then as you go later into the season, the pie chart on the right, that blue area gets a little larger.
02:53So what does that mean?
02:54It means that as we go towards later in the season, second half to very end of the season,
02:59there's a chance that we could get back into a La Nina.
03:03Now, what that would mean is potentially a more active end to the hurricane season.
03:09All right, let's take a look at some of the highlights as we go through the season.
03:14Yeah, so early in the season, we could see a couple of storms early.
03:17We have very warm water temperatures that can help to promote early season development.
03:21We could see a midsummer lull.
03:24We've had that last year, and I think that that could be in the cards again for this year.
03:28And then we have to watch late in the season.
03:30Just like last year, we could be transitioning back towards a La Nina,
03:34and that could really allow the tropics to be busy late in the season.
03:38We're concerned about rapidly intensifying tropical systems.
03:40We've been talking about that for years and years with these warm waters.
03:44That is certainly a concern for this year yet again.
03:47And the Gulf Coast, especially the northern Gulf Coast and the Carolinas,
03:51are at an increased risk this year.
03:53But don't pay attention necessarily to just the landfall point.
03:57Areas well, well inland can see these impacts, just like we saw with Beryl and Helene last year.
04:02All right, AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex Da Silva.
04:06Alex, thanks for joining us here on AccuWeather Early.
04:09AccuWeather Early