AccuWeather's lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva was live on the AccuWeather Network on June 2 to discuss the Atlantic hurricane season, which officially began on June 1.
00:00With that, joining us right now, well, he wasn't around during the Labor Day hurricane of 1935.
00:05Then again, either was I, hurricane expert Alex DaSilva.
00:09And Alex, let's go over the forecast.
00:11You guys issued this back in March, really haven't made certainly any changes.
00:16But when you look at the numbers, maybe not quite as busy, perhaps not as what we had last year.
00:22But overall, we are anticipating an above average, above the historical average season.
00:28Yeah, indeed we are.
00:3013 to 18 named storms is what we're predicting.
00:32Last year we saw 18, so maybe a tick lower.
00:35But really the number that counts as, are any of these going to affect land?
00:39And if you look at the right-hand column there, you can see three to six direct impacts for the United States is what we're forecasting.
00:45Last year, very busy season.
00:46Of course, we saw six.
00:47So again, this season could be very comparable to last season.
00:52Now, when we take a look at how we're able to make the forecast, we always take a look at water temperatures
00:58and see what the keys are.
01:01Yeah, you've heard of El Nino or La Nina.
01:04This is the area that we're looking at.
01:05Well south of Hawaii, along the equator in the eastern Pacific.
01:08In this boxed area, if it's warmer than average, yellows, oranges, and reds, that would be an El Nino.
01:14If it's cooler than average, a lot more blues, it would be a La Nina.
01:18But right now, you can see kind of a mix of some yellows and some blues.
01:21We're in a neutral phase, and it looks like we're going to be in a neutral phase throughout the entirety or pretty much most of the hurricane season.
01:28Yeah, let's take a look at this pie chart, and let's kind of explain what this pie chart is showing us and what the implications are.
01:38Yeah, the leftist side of the pie chart is basically now, so right now we're neutral like we just discussed.
01:42100% chance of being in the neutral phase.
01:45The pie chart is completely filled in.
01:46Middle of the pie chart is middle of the season, and on the right is the end of the season.
01:50You can see that blue area growing a little bit as we go towards the end of the hurricane season.
01:54That would be an increased chance of a La Nina coming in late in the season.
01:58Now, that's exactly what we saw at the end of last season, and we saw a very busy end to the hurricane season last year.
02:04So that's a little bit of a concern. We're going to have to watch this very carefully, as it could be a busy second half of the season.
02:11Of course, during a La Nina, less wind shear than an El Nino, so that's the concern there.
02:16But you're also taking a look at the water temperatures in the Atlantic region.
02:21Yeah, this is a fairly new area of research. It's called the Atlantic Nino or Nino region.
02:26So it's kind of similar to the one in the Pacific, but it acts a little bit different.
02:30In this case, we are in a weak Atlantic Nino, so you can see those cooler-than-average water temperatures right in the middle of that box there.
02:37And what that actually does is it allows a little bit more dry air to come off of Africa, and it really impacts those tropical waves that we see coming off.
02:46So this is a very variable sea surface temperature area, so it can change throughout the season.
02:51But last year, we saw this area significantly cool in the middle of the season, and that's why we saw basically the Atlantic shut down at the end of August and the beginning of September.
03:01So it's almost the opposite in the Pacific, where La Nina means more in the Atlantic. It's the opposite.
03:11So that's interesting as we go forward here.
03:13Now, when you take a look at everything that we've looked at so far this year, as far as all the meteorological signals, what does it tell us, for the big story, if storms form, where are they more likely to make landfall?
03:26Yeah, so we took a look at 12 years in the past that had similar atmospheric conditions to what we expect for this upcoming year.
03:32We plotted all of those landfall points.
03:35All orange landfalls are tropical storms, and all the red dots are hurricanes.
03:39And then we kind of look for clustering.
03:41Look at where we see this clustering at.
03:42We see it along the northern Gulf Coast, the western portions of Florida, and then up into the Carolinas.
03:48It doesn't guarantee that these areas are going to be hit, but it does mean that they are at an increased risk as we go throughout the hurricane season.
03:56AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex DeSilva.
03:58Alex, thanks for joining us here on AccuWeather Early.
