AccuWeather lowers seasonal hurricane forecast after a slow August in the Atlantic

AccuWeather forecasters are still anticipating more major hurricanes this fall, but the overall number of expected storms for the season is lower.

Transcript

00:00AccuWeather experts have been talking about a potentially supercharged September for weeks

00:04as we head toward the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, but there's a bit of a new

00:08development here as we step a little deeper into the month. Yeah, AccuWeather's Chief Meteorologist

00:14Jonathan Porter joins us with the details on why it has been so quiet as of late.

00:22Well, good afternoon. It certainly has been noteworthy. You can almost hear a pin drop here

00:27across the entire tropical Atlantic. There are now some clusters of thunderstorms trying to

00:33organize that we're going to be monitoring as we head toward the peak of the hurricane season.

00:38And John, we look at the annual, the typical tally of storms, kind of the plots of when we

00:46see tropical storms and hurricanes form. How are we doing on the calendar right now? Obviously,

00:51we have plenty of season to go. Well, the challenge with this whole setup here has been,

00:55look at this time period from the middle and end of August and early September. That's when you're

01:00typically ramping it up like a hockey stick, right? It's a quick increase in the frequency

01:06of tropical storms and hurricanes. That has not been the case this year because of lots of dry

01:12air and unfavorable winds in the atmosphere over the tropical Atlantic that we've been covering

01:16here at AccuWeather for the last several weeks. And Brian, you were talking about how our most

01:23recent storm to form was Ernesto back on August 12th. So, we've had quite the stretch here. Yeah,

01:28and the last time this happened was back in the 60s. So, this isn't necessarily typical. We do

01:34see some action during that late August, early September time period that you were just mentioning,

01:39John, but it just hasn't happened. Absolutely. And as we look ahead, John, we do expect to see

01:45some more activity. So, what is our forecast for the whole season? Okay, AccuWeather experts have

01:51made adjustments to our seasonal total hurricane forecast. We've done that ahead of all other

01:57sources to reduce these numbers in terms of the overall seasonal forecast. Now, forecasting 16 to

02:0320 named storms. That's down from 20 to 25. Six to 10 hurricanes, three to six major hurricanes,

02:09but still expecting four to six direct U.S. impacts. We've already had two direct impacts,

02:15so a couple more here as we head through the rest of the hurricane season. And we want to remind

02:20people we've had already significant impacts in the Caribbean and the United States from

02:25hurricanes this season, and it just takes one tropical storm, hurricane, or a tropical rainstorm

02:32to create a real disaster. So, this is not the time to let your guard down. Yeah, we have a few

02:40threat zones that we're monitoring, of course, in the Atlantic Basin. Two lows and two mediums. Of

02:46course, we're going to continue to keep an eye on these systems, and of course, we're going to

02:50check back in with you, John, as we go through this hurricane season. Well, thank you so much

02:55for joining us. Well, we are going to be dealing with a couple of areas to watch here over the

03:00next several days. One in the southern Gulf of Mexico. We'll be watching that particular setup,

03:05and a couple of areas also in the main development region of the tropical Atlantic,

03:09as well as off the southeast coast for potential tropical development later this week.

03:14All right, John, thank you so much for joining us. We, of course,

03:17will continue to check back in with you and our hurricane experts here at AccuWeather.