ORLANDO, Fla. – We’re 23 days DEEP into the 2025 hurricane season, and we’ve technically yet to see a named storm develop. While we do have Invest 90L out on the field, the National Hurricane Center may not find the justification to issue an upgrade to its current status.
Because we haven’t gotten our first named storm into open air quite yet, there’s a lot of chatter on the internet about whether or not this season will ever get going. It will, rest assured, we just have to give it time.
To help better explain why a season is behaving the way that it is, we lean on something called “analogs.” Analogs are often used pretty routinely when developing the pre-seasonal forecasts we broke down leading up to the beginning of our hurricane season.
I want to address the topic and the term specifically, because far too often do I see it tossed around incorrectly. There’s also a lot of really good science that goes into it!
You ever see or hear the name “analog clock?” That’s actually what plays into an analog hurricane season of the past that we will refer back to when trying to get an idea of what types of behaviors and activity we could realize in an upcoming season.
The term analog is derived from a few different pieces. Analog in of itself means a “continuous motion,” which is a beautiful way to describe our atmosphere. It is always moving, always in motion, always changing, and evolving. Analog also means “analogous too” or similar to, which is precisely why we use this title when breaking down past seasons that best match (to the best of their ability anyway) to conditions we’re seeing building up to the next.
One very, very common misconception with the term analog is when it’s used to describe landfalls, total named storms, or general season activity.
Last hurricane season, many unofficial and even official sources were guilty of misusing the term analog when describing what was expected to happen and even what was occurring throughout the season.
Analogs are simply similarities in the overall weather pattern before, during, and even after a hurricane season. It has to do primarily with the “background state” of the atmosphere. What does background state even mean?
For example, things like water temperatures, ocean energy, wind shear patterns, El Nino, La Nina, or a lack thereof, and other varying parameters we can track year-round. These are usually called oscillations. They’re there all the time, but just evolve and revolve throughout a calendar year.
We can’t use an analog to describe how slow the season is to start. This is heavily dictated by smaller pieces of the tropical puzzle that occur day to day or week to week.
If you take a look at the Colorado State University pre-season outlook in its entirety, you’ll note they also have a section dedicated specifically to analogs. For this season, with their most recent June update, they’ve changed a couple of their analogs used for reference.
Their analogs include:
- 1996
- 1999
- 2008
- 2011
- 2021
They choose from the bucket of endless hurricane seasons past. To determine a valuable analog to use when developing predictions for the next round of tropical activity, there are layers upon layers of data to sift through. To begin with, you’re looking back at recorded hurricane seasons from upwards of a century ago.
This is why you can’t simply change your analog from one day to the next. It doesn’t work like that.
To tie this all into a nice bundle, which by the way, thanks for sticking with me if you have! Analogs are simply a glance back in time. Hence why we have analog clocks or watches out there. Time continues to tick like sand through an hourglass. The atmosphere and the weather around us will constantly be in a state of flux or motion.
Even when we’re under clear skies, the sun is shining, or the stars are on full display at night, that doesn’t mean the weather has taken a backseat. It’s just taken on a different form.
Since it’s always moving, we can use old pages from this timeline to give us at least a bit of a glimpse at the future. Like the hands on a clock rotating around its face, things tend to come full circle after a while.