ORLANDO, Fla. – Tropical cyclones are perhaps one of the most tedious, difficult but fascinating phenomena on our planet to observe and forecast.
Right beside tornado forecasting, a tremendous amount of research both at the local and global scale has been invested into studying these ferocious entities that take place across all sorts of corners of the world.
A large chunk of this research has actually been put toward developing a proper regiment for forecasting hurricanes well before they even happen. This comes in the form of our pre-season outlooks you’re probably very familiar with by now, if you live in an area prone to tropical impacts.
A top contender in providing these seasonal forecasts is Colorado State University, where their research division of meteorologists has spent decades refining their process behind putting together not one but multiple forecast discussions throughout the calendar year catered toward the hurricane season.
The No. 1 question we see here at News 6 when it comes time to break down the CSU discussion is what does Colorado know about the hurricane season?
I had the privilege of sitting down with the man himself, Dr. Phil Klotzbach of Colorado State’s tropical division. During our conversation, he provided an abundance of wonderful information surrounding why it is they’ve delved so deep into tropical meteorology not only for the Atlantic basin but other regions of the tropics across the northern hemisphere.
It all started when Dr. Bill Gray, a scientist Klotzbach worked under, began hurricane research back in 1984. This was the year that started it all, with their first-ever release of a pre-season forecast based solely on something called “teleconnections.”
[RELATED: Learn more about teleconnections here]
A similar teleconnection is very heavily utilized by Colorado State University.
“I studied under Dr. Bill Gray, who’s basically the pioneer of hurricane seasonal forecasting. This is the 42nd year of doing hurricane seasonal forecasts,” Klotzbach explained.
He went on to breakdown the history behind how the outlooks came to be.
“Dr. Gray was teaching tropical meteorology in the early 1980s, and he was basically Wikipedia before there was Wikipedia. He kind of knew in his head which years were busy hurricane seasons and which years had El Niño,” Klotzbach said. “He said, ‘Hey, when we have Niño, you don’t really have busy hurricane seasons.’”
Klotzbach thoroughly summarized the ENSO, El Niño Southern Oscillation, and the connection it creates with the atmosphere on an enormous scale. What occurs over the tropical Pacific Ocean has huge effects on the conditions we observe over the Atlantic basin to its entirety.
What to expect during the 2025 hurricane season
After hearing a bit of history behind CSU beginning their seasonal outlooks, I couldn’t resist asking for his thoughts on the upcoming season.
“NOAA just put out their latest ENSO outlook last week, and so they officially declared La Niña over. So now, what we have as you mentioned, is ENSO neutral conditions which means neither El Niño nor La Niña,” Klotzbach said. “At this point we think the best look for the peak of hurricane season, August through October, is for those neutral conditions to persist.”
It was incredibly interesting to hear the details behind why ENSO neutral makes things a bit more complicated when it comes time to predict seasonal activity, especially from such a long-term perspective.
Neutral conditions in the Pacific Ocean tend to favor an unbiased type of hurricane season. Pending what truly occurs in the Atlantic basin — dry air, wind shear, Saharan dust — the activity can swing from one end of the spectrum to the other.
On one side of the coin, intra-seasonal variables win out. Too much dusty, dry, stable air and an overall increase in general wind shear cuts down tropical systems and prevents a lot of development.
You turn the coin over, and the Atlantic “wins” the metaphorical lottery and you could be looking at a very active season both in terms of overall formation and impacts. It has been proven statistically over the years, neutral and La Niña phases of our ENSO favor Caribbean and U.S. landfalls.
“In addition to what’s going on in the Pacific Ocean, what also matters critically is what’s happening especially in the Atlantic Ocean. Right now, the tropical Atlantic is a little bit warmer than normal, especially in the western half of the basin. The subtropical Atlantic is also very warm this time of year. That matters because it changes what happens with the wind patterns across the Atlantic,” Klotzbach explains. “We think, overall, we expect to have a fairly warm tropical Atlantic and likely neutral conditions is going to lead to an above-normal season.”
Klotzbach did make the disclaimer known that they aren’t predicting as potentially hectic of a season as last year would have suggested. A lot hinges on what the Atlantic decides to do when the time comes to produce tropical cyclones.
CSU’s forecast can be found here if you’d like to take a look at the specific numbers they’re predicting for our 2025 hurricane season.
It was also great hearing what CSU uses alongside standard rules of thumb to make their early-season forecasts. A combination of archived data, statistical and dynamical models are actively used almost year-round. They begin investigating what a future hurricane season could look like before the current even comes to a close.
Klotzbach emphasizes these pre-season forecasts are not to be taken at face value in terms of total named storms. The many outlooks we receive before a hurricane season kicks off are primarily used for preparedness sake. The discussions involve taking a look at the overall big picture pattern that could provide us with either a below-average season or hyperactive season as we witnessed in 2024.
We also took some time to discuss what these hurricane forecasts could look like moving into the future as our planet continues evolving and our technology rapidly innovates with it. The details were actually incredibly interesting.
“Obviously, last year was an unusual season,” Klotzbach said. “The way it played out we ended up hyperactive. But very busy early and very busy late, and almost nothing in the middle. It was a really, really weird year, you know, overall how the season played out. We saw, we had the earliest Category 5, Hurricane Beryl, which came off Africa in June.”
He went on to say, “Then we had storms coming off Africa in early October becoming major hurricanes in the eastern Atlantic, which normally by October there’s too much shear it really knocks down your storm.”
“From what you’d normally expect, for example, in the middle of October, the system that eventually became Oscar came out of Africa and the hurricane center was monitoring for potential development. One of the reasons it didn’t develop was because it was under too much easterly shear. Now, normally in October, there’s way too much WESTERLY shear, so to have too much shear out of the other direction is extremely unusual,” he said. “I think most people don’t care about this, but this is like crazy stuff!”
It was essentially an opposite El Niño effect. Instead of observing westerly shear exiting the Pacific Ocean and entering through our Caribbean, the warmer-than-average Atlantic waters produced its own version of easterly winds acting to tear apart what would become Hurricane Oscar.
CSU is calling for a total of 17 named storms this hurricane season, with nine of those storms potentially strengthening to hurricane status. Of those nine, four are predicted to intensify into major hurricanes, Category 3 or greater.
The total named storms are predicted to give a baseline of how active the season as a whole could look. If ingredients such as low wind shear, warm water temperatures, favorable ocean heat content and lift are widely present over an oceanic basin, they tend to increase the potential for hurricanes and even major hurricanes.
You can also catch the FULL interview with Dr. Phil Klotzbach and myself over on the News 6 YouTube channel and ClickOrlando.com.