[Closed] Atlantic Hurricane Season

I plan to throw some cards on this season this weekend, but Odette stood out to me right away. It's always interesting to me to see how things pan out. 

@avon

I love predicting the bigger storms.  I did not do to well last year but it is fun.

@lovendures ditto, I like that we can actually see the outcome, even if it's wrong. 

Looks like Ana got named, but appears it'll stay out at sea. 

As a lot of you probably know, this is the 7th year in a row that a named storm has formed before the official start of Atlantic hurricane season. A Washington Post article said that this is the first time since 1950 that a pre-season storm formed northeast of Bermuda. Surprisingly, Ana is still at large. On the other side of the continent, the eastern Pacific had its earliest named storm on record this month. 

One of the early seasonal forecasts this spring from Accuweather predicted that the Azores High would be weaker this year. The reason why Louisiana kept getting hit by storms in 2020 was because the Azores high pressure zone was notably strong, so tropical systems kept getting shunted west. But this year, with a weaker high, Florida is looking more at risk. I don't know if that forecast still holds.

Ok I thought I'd throw my hat into the ring, with the caveat that I did not do the inner visioning I usually do when making focused predictions. This was more of a quick draw just to see what I immediately gathered.

That said, here's what I got:

Storms that look like they will be major and/or will cause major damage:

• Bill (this one might be trouble and/or unpredictable)
• Henri
• Ida
• Larry
• Mindy (trouble all around)
• Odette (looks very powerful and strong)
• Peter (this one especially seems to signify to me “a storm for the ages”)
• Teresa (might be financially damaging)
• Wanda (high potential for flooding here)

Uncertain storms:

• Elsa (this one seems like the track of this storm will be uncertain)
• Fred (fast but powerful)

Storms that appear will be minor/nothing to worry about:

• Ana
• Claudette
• Danny
• Grace
• Julian
• Kate
• Nicholas
• Rose (looks to be fast)
• Sam
• Victor

@sistermoon    It will be fun to see how your predictions pan out.   

On the general topic, I am hoping for a little pop-up tropical depression to come cool off the Southeast this week.  We're gonna need it. 

Posted by: @avon

I plan to throw some cards on this season this weekend, but Odette stood out to me right away. It's always interesting to me to see how things pan out. 

Odette stood out to me too! Definitely a name to keep in mind.

@sistermoon

That's a long list of storms that might cause major damage. Maybe the storms on that initial list will simply make landfall without necessarily causing lots of damage. Bill comes first, so we'll find out soon..

I keep thinking about the historic Great Hurricane of 1780, which tore through the Lesser Antilles. Even though the region was more sparsely populated than it is now, the 1780 Hurricane still stands as the deadliest Atlantic Hurricane on record. Based on the damage it caused, some modern day meteorologists estimate that its winds were in excess of 200 miles per hour. And this was all before anthropogenic global warming. So it's almost inevitable that we'll see something on that scale again sooner rather than later. 2015's Hurricane Patricia in the Eastern Pacific already sent a warning. 

@coyote

You're right -- I just went back and looked at my notes and see that Henri, Ida, and Larry are really on the cusp of uncertain/unpredictable. But yes, it does appear like quite a few will be major - although only Odette and Peter stood out as the real big baddies, if that makes sense. (Mindy also.)

It was hard for me to distinguish between a storm making landfall and having a substantial impact on residents (which might be considered 'minor' to meteorologists and weather watchers but perhaps not so minor to those weathering the storm) vs. being a MAJOR major storm by anyone's account. So I just lumped them all into 'major' without much nuance.

As for minor -- I saw those as either going out to sea or being a Cat 1/tropical storm with minimal impact for all involved.

I now realize how much leeway there is in terms of what constituted a 'big' storm in my eyes - sorry, I should have done a better job of clarifying that when I first posted :)

I do think it's interesting that so many have seen a focus on Odette already, though.

Thank you for prompting me to look at this again and clarify!