Above-Average Hurricane Season Expected This Year In US

An above-average hurricane season — with regard to the likelihood of a major hurricane striking the mainland — is facing the US this year, according to a new report from meteorologists at Colorado State University.

The report states that both the US Gulf Coast and the East Coast are facing 39% and 38% probabilities that major hurricanes will make landfall this year. The “Gulf Coast” in this case refers to coastline stretching from the panhandle of Florida to Brownsville, Texas.

To clarify, the report considers hurricanes with winds of 111 miles per hour (178 kilometers an hour) and over to be major ones.

The report, from Colorado State’s Tropical Meteorology Project, also states that there is a 52% chance that a major hurricane will move into the Caribbean Sea during 2018’s hurricane season.

Reuters provides more: “Its long-range forecast, which expects 7 storms to develop into hurricanes, is similar to those recently issued by private forecasters AccuWeather and WeatherBell Analytics. The US Climate Prediction Center will issue its outlook for 2018 in late May, according to Dennis Feltgen, spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.”

Continuing: “Both the AccuWeather and Colorado State forecasts point to a weakening La Nina pattern in the Pacific Ocean. La Nina is the name for a pattern of cold ocean temperatures in the Pacific Ocean. The two forecasts do not expect an El Nino pattern will form if the La Nina ends. The El Nino is the name for a pattern of warm ocean temperatures in the central Pacific, which produces high winds across the southern United States, often breaking apart tropical storms.”

As a reminder, there were a number of devastating hurricane landfalls that occurred in the Atlantic in 2017 — with hurricanes Harvey, Maria, and Irma all doing serious damage in the regions that they hit.

Notably, Puerto Rico is still experiencing power supply and water supply problems stemming from Hurricane Maria. If the country was to be hit by another major hurricane in 2018, the damage done would be debilitating, to say the least.