AccuWeather's Lead Hurricane Expert Alex DaSilva was live on the AccuWeather Network to talk about the exclusive AccuWeather forecast for the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season.
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00:00Let's talk about the forecast that was just issued to the public here this morning.
00:07Yeah, the work doesn't stop during the off-season.
00:09We've been busy all winter preparing the hurricane forecast for this upcoming season.
00:13So, for this year, we're forecasting 13 to 18 named storms across the Atlantic Basin,
00:197 to 10 of which we expect to become hurricanes,
00:22and then of those 7 to 10, 3 to 5 major hurricanes.
00:25That's Category 3 or above, but the number that everybody wants to know about,
00:28how many impacts for the United States.
00:31Last year, we saw 6, a very, very destructive year.
00:34This year, we're forecasting 3 to 6 hits on the United States.
00:37So, overall, not as busy as last year, but still at or above the historical averages.
00:44All right, Alex, everybody wants to know, what goes in to making this forecast?
00:51Yeah, there's many factors we look at, and we'll go one by one here.
00:54Number one factor that we look for is this transition from La Nina to probably neutral for most of the season.
01:00Right now, the water's in the eastern Pacific, a little bit cooler than average,
01:03but during the whole entire season, we're expecting things to be right around neutral.
01:08But a lot of times, those neutral patterns can be very, very close to La Ninas,
01:13and when you see that, that indicates lower than average wind shear across the Atlantic Basin,
01:18which can allow for more hurricanes to form.
01:22All right, also, let's talk about this.
01:24With that neutral phase, something that you told me about that I was unaware of,
01:29you tend to get more waves coming off Africa, which means more opportunity for storms.
01:37Yeah, it's kind of a delicate balance, because a lot of storms will come off of Africa,
01:42and the beefier that they are, the better chance they have to develop.
01:45And during a neutral year, we can sometimes get these strong storms to come off of Africa and then develop,
01:51but if they're too strong, they can actually bring in some dry air with them, so it's a delicate balance here.
01:56If we get these storms to be a little bit too strong, they can actually bring a lot of African dust in,
02:01and that would actually be a good thing, because that would actually choke off some of those waves emerging from Africa.
02:06Now, last year at this time, we were looking at exceptionally warm water in the Atlantic Basin,
02:12not quite as warm as it was this time last year, Alex,
02:16but still, the water temperature anomalies are higher.
02:20Yeah, and this is concerning, because everywhere where you see orange and yellow, that's above average water temperatures,
02:25and if it stays this way, which we think it will for the next couple of months all the way through hurricane season,
02:31that we're talking about a lot of fuel in the Atlantic there for development,
02:36and it's not only about the sea surface, it's how deep it goes where you have very deep warm water.
02:42Now, let's take a look at this. Based on the pattern and previous years that have some of the same factors,
02:48you're already coming up with a landfall forecast.
02:51Yeah, we took a look at 12 years, 12 years that had similar atmospheric conditions to this year,
02:56and we plotted where those tropical storms and hurricanes made landfall, and you can see those denoted here by those dots.
03:01The circled areas are where we see clustering, and these are the areas that we're thinking have an above average chance of impacts,
03:07but if you live in the northeast, you see that red dot in New Jersey, that was Hurricane Sandy.
03:12We definitely don't want anybody across any of the coastlines to let their guard down.
03:16AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva. Alex, thanks for joining us again on AccuWeather Early.