By Clint Thompson
The first tropical storm of the season was named last week, a little later than normal. But that should not fool producers into thinking that’s a foreshadow of what’s to come this storm season, believes Pam Knox, University of Georgia (UGA) Extension agricultural climatologist.
“We hadn’t gone this late in the year without an ‘A’ storm since about 2009. The first one is coming a little later than what we usually expect, but there’s no correlation with what happens early in the season and what happens later in the year,” Knox said. “We’ll probably be back in neutral conditions next month; we’re that close to falling out of the El Niño. I think by August or so we may very well have swung in the other direction to the La Niña. The La Niña is much more favorable for the development of storms because there’s not as much wind shear. I think later in the season we’re going to see activity pop up.”
Knox said wind shear at the end of the current El Niño pattern helped suppressed storm activity so far.
Tropical Cyclone 1 strengthened last week in the Gulf of Mexico into Tropical Storm Alberto.
Colorado State University (CSU) hurricane researchers have maintained their April forecast for an extremely active Atlantic hurricane season in 2024. The maintained forecast for the 2024 season, with the average for 1991-2020 in parentheses, is:
- Named storms: 23 (14.4)
- Named storm days: 115 (69.4)
- Hurricanes: 11 (7.2)
- Hurricane days: 45 (27)
- Major hurricanes: 5 (3.2)
- Major hurricane days: 13 (7.4)