It’s been a remarkably quiet July and August this year, with no named tropical storms since the three that occurred early in the season. In fact, it’s one of the quietest tropical periods in the Atlantic basin since records began. But the models are starting to show a change in the pattern as the Saharan dust dies down and the waves coming off of Africa into the Main Development Area in the Atlantic are becoming more frequent and stronger, so that quiet pattern is not likely to last much longer.
With the shift in the pattern comes a huge increase in the hype on social media surrounding the possibility of tropical storms. You’ve probably seen this on Facebook, Twitter, or your favorite social media platform–someone posts a picture of a single time step in a single computer model run showing a tremendous storm about to hit the United States that could cause big impacts on that community. I have posted the GFS model run tonight showing a strong tropical storm sitting over my hometown of Athens 372 hours ahead of the current time. That’s more than 2 weeks from now! If I believed it, I might be thinking about dire consequences to my home, purchasing a generator, lots of water, and other necessities, and having a plan to get out if it looked really bad. I am sure that if I looked on Twitter right now, someone has posted this picture with a warning that this could be very bad.
However, the likelihood of this actually occurring is vanishingly small. Computer models this time of year frequently produce “tropical storms” that are more fantasy than reality, especially if you go out in time more than a week. The GFS is especially noted for these spurious systems, but all of the models do it. If you compare them, there is often little consistency between the models, and big changes can occur between one model run and the next a few hours later. By the time you read this on Thursday morning, the modeled storm may have slowed, sped up, moved in a different direction, or even vanished as new information is included and the model run again with the new data.
That’s why it is important not to pay much attention to the hype you will see. Remember that many of the people posting on social media are more interested in posting the most extreme conditions they can find because they get more clicks and attention that way. Many of them are not trained meteorologists and most of them have little background in hurricane forecasting. Experienced hurricane forecasters know that to make good forecasts you have to take anything this far out with a pillar of salt. They watch for consistency over time between models and from one model run to the next. When they make their forecasts for the probable path of any storm that does develop, they use their skills to determine which models are performing best and use their judgment to identify the areas that are most likely to see a storm and how strong it is likely to be. And they don’t trust the models this far out, since too much can and will change by the time any potential storm gets close enough to be worrisome.
What this should do is serve as a reminder that we are not even halfway through the Atlantic tropical season yet, and it is not too late to prepare for any storm that might come through later in the year. We know some will happen, and it could be quite a few in spite of the early quiet period, so do not let your guard down. Keep watching trusted forecasters like the experts at the National Hurricane Center for the best information provided without hype in a consistent, scientific way. And remember, it only takes one storm to cause tremendous destruction. This week we are marking the 30th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew, which was the only bad storm in an El Nino year with few storms overall. If that one storm hits near you, the amount of damage that it could cause might take years to recover from, and that is worth preparing for.
