Hurricane season 2025 is less than 100 days away, but forecasters have good news
With less than 100 days to go until the start of the 2025 Atlantic season, the National Hurricane Center is working to finish up its reports of the devastating and deadly 2024 season.
In a triumph for research and forecast improvement efforts, the Center's track forecast performance for 2024 – which saw five landfalls on the U.S. mainland – was the best in its history, the center stated in a preliminary review released this week of its forecasts for last year.
"We’re improving our forecasts by 24 hours every decade. That’s remarkable," Rick Spinrad, an oceanographer and administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from 2021 until 2025, told Paste BN on Wednesday. "The 5-day forecast of hurricane track is as accurate as the 3-day forecast was 20 years ago."
The center issued 347 forecasts in the Atlantic basin last year. The mean track errors for every forecast window, from 12 hours to 120 hours, "broke records for accuracy," found the center's review, authored by John Cangialosi and Jon Martinez. Cangialosi is a senior hurricane specialist at the center and Martinez is a research scientist with the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere at Colorado State University, working under the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program.
"The report shows that the investments we've made in hurricane research have paid off," said Jeff Masters, an author at Yale Climate Connections, a co-founder of Weather Underground and a former hurricane scientist with the NOAA Hurricane Hunters.
The intensity forecast accuracy wasn't quite as great, after a series of unpredictable storms fueled by record and near-record water temperatures in the Atlantic hurricane region. Forecasting the degree to which storms are going to transform into powerful monster hurricanes has been a hurdle for decades. Even though it has seen vast improvement over the past decade or so, it remains one of the "most significant challenges."
Beryl, the early hurricane that set records for development east of the Caribbean, set the stage for rapid intensification events. In total, the hurricane center noted 34 episodes of rapid intensification last year, when a storm's maximum wind speeds increase by at least 35 mph within a 24-hour period. That was nearly double the season average over the past 10 years, the report stated.
In the end, the center's forecast errors for intensity were "a little higher" than the previous couple of years, the report noted. However, despite the slightly higher number of errors last year, the long-term trend is headed in the right direction with a decrease in errors, Masters said.
"Track forecasts have shown the biggest improvement, but intensity forecasts have also been getting better," he said. "It's important to keep funding hurricane research to make sure these improvements continue."
The value of hurricane research
"Improved hurricane forecasts have been a huge benefit to society at low cost, with many lives saved and billions in damage prevented," Masters said. A 2023 study found that advancements in hurricane forecasting between 2007 and 2020 led to an 18% reduction in total hurricane-related costs, he said, which "translates to an average cost reduction of $5 billion per hurricane."
Spinrad said the forecast success "demonstrates unequivocally the value of continued investment in research and new technologies to improve our forecast capabilities."
As the errors keep getting smaller, Spinrad said it means "we’re saving lives and protecting property better than ever."
2024 Atlantic hurricane season summary
Last year's hurricane season was above normal in several respects, including the number of named storms (18), the number of hurricanes (11), and the number of major hurricanes (5).
The 20-year average between 1991-2020 was 14 named storms, seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes.
Final reports for three of the storms that made landfall in the U.S. – Francine, Helene and Milton – are still being completed, but here's what the center concluded about last year's other storms that made landfall in the U.S.:
- Beryl's peak maximum sustained winds of 166 mph were the strongest on record for an Atlantic hurricane prior to August.
- It was also the earliest Category 4 hurricane on record and the earliest Category 5 hurricane on record, and became a hurricane farther east in the Atlantic than any other known hurricane.
- Beryl wreaked havoc in Grenada and the southern Windward Islands, destroying as much as 98% of the infrastructure on the islands of Carriacou and Petite Martinique, causing more than $430 million in damages.
- Beryl made landfall in Texas as a Category 1 hurricane with sustained winds of 82 mph, and higher gusts.
- After landfall, Beryl spawned 65 known tornadoes between Texas and New York.
- Beryl is blamed for 48 deaths in the U.S., including 14 direct deaths. Deaths occurred in Texas, Louisiana and Vermont.
- Among the direct deaths caused by Beryl were eight in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, six in Venezuela, and three each in Grenada and Jamaica.
- Debby made landfall in Taylor County on Aug. 5 — in a region of Florida known as the Big Bend, where the coast curves southward from the Panhandle — as a Category 1 hurricane.
- Debby crossed Florida and Georgia, then made a second landfall in South Carolina as a subtropical storm.
- Rainfall amounts as high as 16.98 inches occurred in Sarasota, Florida, amidst reports of 10-15 inches of rainfall in the Tampa Bay region.
- A wide swath of rain, with maximum reports up to 10-12 inches, was reported across northern Florida, and rainfall amounts from 10 to 20 inches across Georgia and the Carolinas. A peak rainfall of 22.02 inches was reported in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, and 15.75 inches in Brunswick County, North Carolina.
- Debby's heavy flooding was blamed for 18 fatalities and $4 billion in damages.
Get a disaster plan
It's never too early to start planning for hurricane season.
Now is the time to start thinking about your personal disaster plans and go bags if you live in a hurricane prone region. Even if your region was affected last year, it could be affected again this year. Just ask the residents of Steinhatchee in Taylor County, Florida who were affected by three hurricanes in 13 months.
Emergency Prep 101: What to put in your "Go Bag."
What are the storm names for 2025?
To help prompt you to think about hurricane preparedness for this year, here's a preview of the storm names for the season that begins June 1 and runs until Dec. 1:
- Andrea
- Barry
- Chantal
- Dexter
- Erin
- Fernand
- Gabrielle
- Humberto
- Imelda
- Jerry
- Karen
- Lorenzo
- Melissa
- Nestor
- Olga
- Pablo
- Rebekah
- Sebastien
- Tanya
- Van
- Wendy
Dinah Voyles Pulver covers climate change and the environment for Paste BN. She's written about hurricanes, tornadoes and violent weather for more than 30 years. Reach her at dpulver@usatoday.com or @dinahvp on Bluesky or X.