Two key factors suggest that the 2025 hurricane season won't be as active as the one that caused such heavy damage in the U.S. last year. The water in the tropical Atlantic isn't as warm, meaning less energy to fuel massive hurricanes like Helene and Milton. And this season isn't expected to see a La Niña weather pattern — a cooling in the Pacific Ocean that makes it easier for tropical storms to form in the Atlantic.
At the same time, a study finds that severe convective storms are becoming a bigger problem, and the Trump administration has announced cuts that could imperil key federal capabilities for weather forecasting.
But let's start with the good news, even if the hurricane forecast is preliminary.
As this Washington Post article explores in detail, the early indications are that the conditions during the Atlantic hurricane season could be much more benign than in 2024, when there were 18 named storms and five hurricanes that made landfall in the U.S. Conditions might even be close to opposite of what they were a year ago.
Last year, an El Niño weather pattern held into the early part of the hurricane season, leading to record temperatures in the Atlantic waters where tropical storms form. An El Niño pattern interferes with the winds that coalesce into tropical storms... but a La Niña pattern took over as the summer progressed and removed the obstacles. Hurricane Helene blasted through Florida, Georgia and western North Carolina in late September, and Hurricane Milton slashed across Florida two weeks later.
This year, a La Niña is currently in place, reducing water temperatures and thus the energy that is available to fuel hurricanes. Yet that La Niña is expected to fade as the summer progresses. It's not clear that an El Niño and its hurricane-preventing effects will replace that La Niña, but at least the weather pattern that is conducive to major storms should be absent.
As I say, the hurricane forecast is preliminary. Much more definitive information will be available in about a month, and even better forecasts in May. But I'm really hoping for a break, for everyone's sake.
If only severe convective storms would cooperate....
A recent study finds that the storms continue to pose increased dangers. The season for such storms is starting earlier and ending later, and they are becoming more powerful. A derecho — a long-lasting band of rapidly moving thunderstorms that causes straight-line wind damage that can stretch for hundreds of miles — hit downtown Houston in May and caused more destruction than Hurricane Beryl, which struck the area in July
Citing a study by CoreLogic, the Triple-I Blog writes:
"The traditional severe convective storm (SCS) season is expanding, with storms appearing earlier in spring and continuing later into fall. Tornado impacts are also shifting much farther east than historical norms, impacting Midwest states such as Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio."
Triple-I says:
"Hailstorms pose a threat to 41 million homes at moderate or greater risk, representing a reconstruction cost value (RCV) of $13.4 trillion, according to CoreLogic’s risk score models. For tornadoes, 66 million homes are at risk, valued at $21 trillion RCV. Straight-line winds affect 53 million homes with an RCV of $18.6 trillion....
"[Insurers need] refined risk models and improved infrastructure in emerging high-risk areas. Geographic risk exposure management will become increasingly important as SCS events evolve, according to CoreLogic."
Yet in Washington DC...
The Trump administration has fired some 880 staffers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). CBS reports that an administration official said critical employees, such as National Weather Service meteorologists, were largely spared. But CBS adds: "A source at the National Weather Service disputed this, however, telling CBS News some meteorologists were impacted, including radar specialists, as well as staff of the Hurricane Hunters crew, which fly airplanes into storms to help forecasters make accurate predications during a hurricane."
Given the chaos that has surrounded the budget cuts by Elon Musk's DOGE team — the claim of an $8 billion cut in spending that turned out to be $8 million, the claims of major savings on contracts that actually ended almost 20 years ago while George W. Bush was president, and so on — I, for one, have become skeptical of any claim DOGE makes. We'll have to wait to see what's really going on.
(I confess to a bit of a personal stake in the fate of NOAA. The rock-climbing partner and close friend of my younger daughter is a contractor for NOAA, and her boss was among those fired. My daughter's friend, a very bright and impressive woman, says the boss is the best she's ever had, but the boss had the temerity to be promoted a few months ago and thus is officially "probationary" in her new position and easy to fire quickly. I've covered major businesses for a very long time, and I assure you that going after the easy fires is never the right way to go.)
The Trump administration is also reportedly planning to close two key facilities for weather forecasting. According to Axios, "One of the buildings is the nerve center for generating national weather forecasts.... The modeling center runs the computer models used in day-to-day weather forecasting and ensures that weather data correctly goes into these models and that they are operating correctly."
Axios says "another building on the list... is the Radar Operations Center [in Norman, Oklahoma], a centralized hub for technicians and researchers to work on improving and repairing the nation's aging fleet of Doppler weather radars."
The firings and moves to close facilities come amid considerable speculation that Trump wants to eliminate or at least neuter NOAA. The thinking is that he may have it in for NOAA because it talks about and tracks climate change. Trump may also want to privatize weather forecasting, along with many other other parts of the federal government. There's even speculation that he's still fuming because a NOAA official told Alabamans not to worry about a hurricane in Trump's first term, shortly after Trump had said publicly that they were in the line of fire — the NOAA notification that led Trump to use a Sharpie to alter a NOAA map and falsely claim that he'd been right.
Whatever his plans for NOAA, I'm in favor of top-notch forecasting and hope no permanent damage is being done.
I'm also in favor of fewer hurricanes and severe convective storms, and if these early predictions bear out then we can perhaps all have a more relaxed summer. Here's hoping.
Cheers,
Paul