ORLANDO, Fla. – We’re about to embark through another hurricane season together as Floridians.
Last year left its mark, and the numbers are certainly looking a bit concerning once again as June fast approaches.
The Eastern Pacific has its first area of interest designated by the National Hurricane Center, the infamous yellow blip or “lemon” as some folks call it.
How many storms are we looking at? How many hurricanes could form? We’ve already dissected a few of the latest pre-seasonal outlooks available to us both on-air and online. But which should you be paying attention to the most? Which of the several “forecasts” available to you are of reputable background?
I’ll also add, there’s a very select few your News 6 Weather Team focuses on over all the rest of the noise. Today, we’ll walk you through how to find that quality signal and avoid the noise spread out across the interwebs.
Right away, I’d like to point out a number of the seasonal forecasts you may stumble upon online are in fact rooted in science and, for the most part, truth. Whenever you do find a forecast pertaining to the hurricane season, they’re usually produced by a private weather entity who may or may not have affiliation to a major news network, National Weather Service or especially NOAA and National Hurricane Center.
But that isn’t always true.
You see, I’m sure you’ve either participated or witnessed others — at home, at your office, at a get together, a sporting event, you name it — play a round or two of fantasy football. In essence, that’s what a majority of these seasonal outlooks boil down to. Folks taking swings to see how close or far they can get from what actually comes to be during a hurricane season.
Some social media platforms are far worse than others, in fact, where you’ll find anyone with a computer or a smart phone deciding they’re going to share, “I’m predicting X amount of storms for this upcoming hurricane season.” You may want to stray away from those, especially if you’re not up to speed at all on what goes into building a hurricane seasonal outlook from such a long range.
Here at News 6, we primarily focus on two major entities who will produce their own forecasts for the hurricane seasons coming up: NOAA and Colorado State University.
The tropical weather division was initially started by a Dr. Bill Gray, of Colorado State, in 1984, which marked the beginning of pre-season tropical forecasts. It started with very simple correlations, like El Niño meaning more shear for the Atlantic resulting in (usually) lesser storms forming.
Over time, forecast models improved, and we’ve continued to safeguard record keeping of each hurricane season as they go by. This way, we continue to improve on the forecast process more and more as we work our way through time.
It goes without saying, NOAA has a dedicated team whose sole purpose is digesting all the readily available archived data and fresh forecast data to generate a hurricane season outlook. The same can be said for Colorado State, who uses several different dynamical and statistical models to produce their numbers we advertise to you all before a hurricane season kicks off.
They also EMPHASIZE that creating forecasts from this far out can be done with only a certain level of skill. Sometimes, it can be quite tedious to forecast a landfalling hurricane two to three days out. This becomes increasingly difficult trying to forecast precisely how many hurricanes may form altogether.
Now, the nature of the beast — that being the internet — is there comes to be a lot of fluff and noise you have to work hard to avoid when it comes time for a hurricane season. All sorts of outlandish posts and articles are lurking your social media and every Google search you perform when trying to look for information surrounding what’s to come during a future hurricane season.
You can never go wrong with following NOAA and Colorado State University. Dr. Phil Klotzbach from CSU’s research team was kind enough to give me some time to speak with him and get even more detailed information on how their team creates the forecasts we then breakdown for all of you wonderful folks at home.
Their team has several decades of archived data to work with, as well as continuously improving computer models they use to determine what a season could look like several months in time.
NOAA operates exactly the same. A federal organization that works feverishly year-round to interpolate and dissect all of their compiled data before unveiling the numbers for a season. This is also why they wait until a couple days prior to the start of the calendar hurricane season.
There are a few other reputable sources you can take a glance or two at. But not all of them can be considered “reliable.”
Because of technology and social media, I want to emphasize how easy it is for unofficial sources to post up a graphic or two with their “prediction” and it be as far from the truth as could possibly be.
You can always count on your weather team here at News 6 to bring to your attention which forecasts we need to be paying attention to, as well as weighing in on our thoughts on what’s to come for the 2025 hurricane season.
Click here to see more on how to better equip your household to withstand those hurricane conditions if and when they strike.