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The official 2018 Hurricane Season begins on June 1st. That hasn’t stopped the first storm from developing ahead of schedule. There’s now a 90% chance the storm out in the Gulf of Mexico will develop into a tropical cyclone by Saturday with parts of Florida bracing for anywhere between 5-10 inches of rain.
NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center is the outfit responsible for predicting how active any given hurricane season will be. They’ve released their predictions for the 2018 Hurricane Season and there’s a 75% chance this year will be above-normal or normal. It breaks down as 35% chance of Above Normal, 40% chance of Normal, and a 25% chance of Below Normal.
They predict there will be 10-16 Named Storms, 5-9 Hurricanes, and 1-4 Major Hurricanes during the year’s season:
NOAA's Climate Prediction Center outlook for the 2018 Atlantic hurricane has a 35% chance of an above-normal season, a 40% chance of a near-normal season, and a 25% chance of a below-normal season. https://t.co/VHM1eBoWZ3 pic.twitter.com/1XLX10wnJg
— National Hurricane Center (@NHC_Atlantic) May 24, 2018
Some of the driving factors contributing to this year’s season are the potential of a weak or light El Niño developing as well as above average sea temperatures in both the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.
If you’d rather watch a video then read about predictions, they’ve also released a 2018 Hurricane Season Outlook video which you can check out:
I’ll be honest, I kind of feel shitty for my neighbors. I live in Sarasota, Florida and we get hit by at least 3 storms per year (almost always Tropical Storms, the Hurricanes always miss us). My neighbors bought their house and moved in late last Summer at a time when the hurricane shutters were still up on the house. They never bothered to take them down after moving in, not until like three weeks ago. Now they’re just going to have to put them back up.