By Clint Thompson
Just because a hurricane or tropical system has not impacted the Southeast so far this year doesn’t mean that they won’t. Not with tropical season lasting until Nov. 30. Not with water temperatures still favoring development.
Pam Knox, University of Georgia (UGA) Extension agricultural climatologist, discussed the current tropical season and reminded farmers in Florida, Georgia and Alabama about what has happened in previous years.
“We’re passed the peak, but we’ve still got almost half the season to go. If you think of a lot of the storms that have hit Georgia, it’s not unusual to have them late September or early October, occasionally even into November. The Gulf of America is very warm. If something does develop there, it could grow relatively quickly,” Knox said.
Meteorologists are using artificial intelligence (AI) as a tool to help predict when a tropical system would impact the Southeast. Some are seeing potential for activity in early to mid-October.
“AI works on what’s happened before. They’re not good at predicting outside of what’s happened historically. We have had storms that have appeared in the Gulf in October,” Knox said. “The GFS model likes to pop up every little wave into a tropical storm, while the European (model) is a little more conservative in that. We don’t really know because they are just starting to use these AI models, so there’s potential there that they could be really good, but we just don’t know yet.
“A lot of those forecasts are going to just vanish. I think it’s a good idea for people to keep a watch because it could happen. Historically, we’ve had many of those storms before, but it’s too early to put any weight on any particular model or any particular time yet.”
Hurricane Michael was a destructive storm that impacted the Southeast in 2018, moving across the region on Oct. 10-11. Hurricane Milton was another devastating October storm, impacting Florida last year.