Hurricane season begins in the US and residents are already on alert

• Hurricane season begins in the US.
• The National Hurrican Center has already issued warnings.
• What will this year’s storm season bring?

Atlantic hurricane season began last Thursday and authorities warned residents of the southeast coast of the United States to be prepared for storms, according to the AP and infobae. Will there be more dangerous storms this year?

Although forecasters’ estimates call for an «almost normal» season, Mike Brennan, director of the National Hurricane Center (NHC), was more cautious when he said during a press conference that nothing is really normal when it comes to hurricanes.

WHY DID AUTHORITIES ISSUE AN ALERT?

He has launched a kind of preventive alert to the public: «A normal season could sound good if you compare it with some hurricane seasons in recent years,» he said. «But there’s nothing good about a near-normal hurricane season in terms of activity.»

It should be noted that the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecast in late May that there was a 40% chance that the 2023 hurricane season would be near normal and 30% that it would be more active than normal — that is: more storms than usual — and 30% below normal.

ALERT FOR FLORIDA

According to the NHC, a phenomenon in the Gulf of Mexico developed more detailed characteristics and now has a 50% probability of becoming a tropical storm in the next few days. If it came to that it would be the first storm of the 2023 hurricane season and it would be called Arlene.

This system, though still disorganized, moves slowly over the Gulf of Mexico, bringing showers and thunderstorms to South Florida. The NHC experts noted that environmental conditions are only «marginally favorable» for its further development.

THERE IS UNCERTAINTY THIS SEASON

For Brennan the season is defined by a key word: Uncertainty. “So we anticipate an intense season with 12 to 17 named storms,” Brennan said, adding that five to nine of those could become hurricanes, and of those, one to four could be Category 3 or higher.

«It is enough for a single storm to hit where you live for it to become an intense season,» he said. Just this year, the NHC developed a new storm surge model that, according to Brennan, “helps forecast storm surge 72 hours in advance of the storm’s arrival,” allowing life-saving information to be transmitted to emergency authorities and to issue evacuation orders.

WHAT HAVE BEEN SOME OF THE WORST HURRICANES IN THE US?

In August 1992, the powerful Hurricane Andrew struck south of Miami, crossed Florida and made a second landfall in Louisiana. For years it was the costliest and most devastating hurricane to hit US coastlines, killing some 65 and causing more than $27.3 billion in damage at the time. The Category 5 storm destroyed more than 65,000 homes.

Hurricane Katrina, which struck the New Orleans area as a Category 3 storm in August 2005, still stands as one of the most devastating in the United States. Katrina left more than 1,200 dead and catastrophic damage on the Gulf of Mexico coast. Hurricane Harvey struck Louisiana before hitting Houston as a Category 4 storm in 2017. Harvey caused severe flooding and killed more than 80 people, including 50 in the greater Houston area.