Hurricane season is nearly a month old; and so far, we’ve had two short-lived tropical storms – including Tropical Storm Barry, which made landfall south of Tampico, Mexico, last night. LSU Climatologist Dr. Jill Trepanier says we haven’t had any hurricanes yet, because we haven’t gotten to the stage where we have that high sea surface temperature, low shear environment just yet.
“The trade winds are a little faster than what we’ve seen in recent years, which makes the ocean temperature a little bit cooler. That extra wind blowing over the ocean surface induces a little more of what we call upwelling on the eastern side of the Atlantic, Trepanier explained.
Trepanier says if you’re hoping that it stays this way for the remaining five months of hurricane season, forget about it.
“When we think about that peak season, we’re talking really warm ocean water, reduced to trade wind flow generally speaking, and then that Saharan dust doesn’t tend to last late into August,” Trepanier said.
At this time last year, Hurricane Beryl was gaining strength in becoming a Category 5 hurricane – the highest on the scale – as it took aim on the Texas coast. It eventually weakened to a Category 1 storm the time it made landfall in Matagorda Bay. Trepanier notes that after Tropical Storm Chris briefly formed during that time, the next named storm, Hurricane Debby, didn’t form until more than a month later.
“I think, because of Beryl, when you think of one of these massive, really unprecedented systems that comes in so early, it makes you think that the whole season will be that way. But that’s not really the way that it works,” Trepanier said.
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