Andrea Comes, Andrea Goes

The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season comes in like a lamb with a weak, short-lived storm

The low-level cloud swirl spinning harmlessly over the open waters of the high Atlantic wasn’t much to look at on Tuesday but managed to muster up enough steam for NHC to briefly classify it Tropical Storm Andrea, the first named storm of the 2025 hurricane season.

Arguably Andrea peaked before it was even designated a tropical storm late Tuesday morning, and its wind-shear-directed haircut came fast and furious thereafter. Andrea never had much in the way of thunderstorm activity and by Tuesday afternoon, the spigot of wind shear – something we detailed in Monday’s newsletter – had turned Andrea into a naked swirl of clouds and sealed its fate in the graveyard of the North Atlantic.

Andrea at the bottom of the pack

Andrea put a few paltry ACE points on the board – the Accumulated Cyclone Energy number that serves as a hurricane season report card – but the numbers are some of the weakest we’ve seen for almost any storm over the past decade. Of the 179 named storms since 2015, only Chris last season, Imelda in 2019, and Philippe in 2017 had lower ACE numbers than 2025’s Andrea.

Starting the season with a bottom 1 percenter is welcome news after the historic start in 2024 that included the likes of Beryl, the only June hurricane to reach Category 4 strength and the earliest Category 5 hurricane on record.

It’s too early to take solace in the lackluster start, since slow starts historically don’t show any relationship with seasonal hurricane activity. Any break is a welcome break, however, especially in the early months when the Atlantic is supposed to be less active.

For the time being the Atlantic will keep a low profile, with no concerning signs or trends into the first week of July.