Hurricane season begins, with the first below-average forecast in a decade

Hurricane season in the Atlantic kicked off Monday, and, for the first time in more than a decade, forecasters expect it to be relatively slow.

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The below-average forecast is driven by the expectation that a strong El Niño pattern will develop , which is associated with less hurricane formation in the Atlantic. The opposite is true in the Pacific, however, which should have an active season.

Most hurricanes that make landfall in the U.S. form in the Atlantic, where forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predict the year will have just three to six hurricanes (storms are considered hurricanes once winds reach 74 mph) and between eight and 14 named tropical storms.

The forecast does not predict whether storms will make landfall, however.

“It just takes one,” Ken Graham, director of the National Weather Service, said at a news conference last month about the agency’s predictions . He noted that one of the costliest hurricanes of all time, Andrew in 1992, took place in a season with less tropical storm formation than usual.

“Even in a below-average season, even if you have fewer storms, they could be big ones,” Graham said.

NOAA’s forecast is roughly in line with others. A website operated by Colorado State University and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center tracks predictions from 23 hurricane forecasting centers and found that the average predicted was five hurricanes . In a typical year, seven would be expected. Last year, there were five hurricanes in the Atlantic , which was lower than the six to 10 NOAA had projected . In 2024, there were 11 , in a year when NOAA had predicted eight to 13 .