With hurricane season underway, what can we expect?

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - The 2024 hurricane season officially started Saturday. With warmer sea surface temperatures and a La Nina weather pattern predicted we can expect a very active season in the Atlantic.

The National Hurricane Center is forecasting 17-25 named storms with 8-13 of those being hurricane-strength. They are also predicting 4-7 major hurricanes which is a category three or higher.

Even though we expect an active hurricane season we might not feel the effects of that until this fall. The peak months are typically from August through October with the most active month being September. We also tend to see some of the strongest hurricanes during the month of September due to warmer sea surface temperatures.

Every year the National Hurricane Center puts out a list of names to use to organize the storms that develop. There are twenty-one names in each season’s list. In the event that we go through the entire list, we would typically move on to the Greek alphabet, but since we had a historic season in 2020 with 30 named storms, some of the letters were retired due to the storm’s devastation. Now if we go through the original list of names we will then go to a supplement list of hurricane names instead of the Greek alphabet.

Here is this season’s list of names:

Make sure you have a way to get watches and warnings as we head into an active hurricane season.

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