By Aaron Krause
Hunker down for yet another hectic hurricane season this year, say AccuWeather forecasters. However, in 2021, the period of intense storm activity from June 1 to Nov. 30 won’t quite match 2020’s record-breaking season of practically nonstop action.
AccuWeather’s team of tropical weather experts, led by veteran meteorologist Dan Kottlowski, predict that this year, 16 to 20 named storms will form, including seven to 10 hurricanes. Of the storms expected to reach hurricane strength, weather experts believe three to five will become major hurricanes. Such storms are Category 3 or higher that carry maximum sustained winds of 111 mph or greater.
Experts consider a normal season to be one carrying 14 storms ⎯ with seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes. Last year’s season produced 30 storms, including 13 hurricanes. Six of those reached the major hurricane threshold.
It was a record year with 12 named storms making landfall in the U.S., overtaking the previous record of nine direct strikes in 1916.
In fact, forecasters had to turn to the rarely used Greek alphabet for just the second time to name the storms. Forecasters use Greek letters as names when they have exhausted the list of a year’s assigned proper names.
But the weather service will no longer use Greek letters, instead developing an alternate overflow name list. Journalists and the public were asking more questions about the names than the storms themselves.
Also, say goodbye to Dexter, Dorian, Leah, and Laura. Officials have permanently retired these names, following the tradition of not reusing the names of particularly destructive storms.
Forecasters this year will step up to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Global Forecast System weather model, which should improve predictions on tracking, intensity, and landfall locations.
According to a statement from the National Hurricane Center, the start of the 2021 hurricane season remains June 1. Weather experts had been considering changing the start to May 15, due to an increase in tropical activity in the Atlantic basin over the past decade.
Since 2011, 10 named storms have formed in the Atlantic before June 1. Eight of those happened since 2015. The years 2012, 2016, and 2020 featured seasons that not only saw storms before June but experienced more than one storm before the official season start.
While the 2021 hurricane season’s official start date will remain the same, there has been at least one change. The Miami-based National Hurricane Center started issuing tropical weather outlooks on May 15, two weeks earlier than normal.
To determine how active a hurricane season will be, weather experts consider factors such as the strength or weakness of systems like El Niño and La Niña, short-term climate fluctuations caused by the warming or cooling of waters in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. When the water in the equatorial Pacific is warmer than average, forecasters typically declare it an “El Niño.” When the reverse is true, weather experts call it a “La Niña.”
Locally, ongoing work by Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) will help speed electricity restoration following major storms for Coral Springs residents.
“Florida Power & Light Company customers in Coral Springs continue to benefit from the company’s ongoing work to strengthen the energy grid and improve service reliability,” company officials wrote in a press release.
“FPL investments, which include strengthening power lines and poles, trimming trees near power lines, installing smart grid technology, and undergrounding power lines in select areas, help make the grid more reliable day-to-day and speed restoration following major storms,” according to FPL.
“For more than 15 years, FPL has been improving the energy grid, making it stronger, smarter, and more storm-resilient to keep the lights on for customers in good weather and bad,” said Eric Silagy, FPL’s president, and CEO.
Improvements in place last season, for example, prevented some 150,000 potential outages, Silagy said.