Published on May 15, 2024 at 4:59 pm
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The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season is still a little over two weeks away, but the first forecasts started Wednesday.
The National Hurricane Center began issuing its tropical weather outlooks, which show the probability of tropical cyclones forming over a given area in the next two to seven days.
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The Hurricane Center started issuing its outlooks ahead of the season to account for early activity, which has been common in recent years. The Hurricane Center started issuing the tropical outlook products in mid-May of 2021.
Of the past 10 hurricane seasons, eight of them had storms develop before June 1. Michael Brennan, director of the National Hurricane Center, says the tropical outlooks will help citizens get a jump start on hurricane season and these outlooks are a quick daily reminder of what might or might not be brewing in the tropics.
“Last year we extended our tropical weather outlook where we forecast the formation of tropical storms out to seven days from five days. So that’s designed to give people a little more of a heads up situational awareness of a system that could form,” Brennan said.
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“It’s going to have that long lead time for systems we have the most confidence in. So there are still systems that happen without as much lead time. But for the most part, that product comes out every six hours starting May 15, all the way through Nov. 30. It’s sort of your basic ‘Hey, I should check this kind of once a day during hurricane season, see what’s going on.’”
Currently there are no tropical depressions, tropical storms or hurricanes expected to form over the next seven days in the Atlantic Basin. Although a special outlook was issued in late April for a system with a sub-30% chance of development, it failed to become a tropical system. That was not part of the regularly scheduled outlooks.
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