NOAA Eyes Another Active Hurricane Season Amid Agencywide Turmoil
National Weather Service loses the equivalent of a decade of its workforce in just three months, with forecast offices scrambling to maintain 24/7 operations
Government forecasters issued their first outlook for the upcoming 2025 hurricane season on Thursday.
Experts at NOAA and the National Weather Service that it operates – including forecasters from the National Hurricane Center – are signaling another active hurricane season on the horizon, predicting 13-19 named storms and 6-10 hurricanes across the Atlantic, Gulf, and Caribbean, with 3-5 becoming Category 3, 4, or 5 hurricanes.
On average 14 named storms, 7 hurricanes, and 3 Category 3 or stronger hurricanes occur in a typical Atlantic hurricane season.
NOAA predicts a 60% chance of an above average hurricane season with only a 10% chance of a below average season.
Though above the long-term averages, the forecast is notably lower than in 2024 when experts issued their highest spring predictions since official hurricane outlooks began almost 30 years ago.
2024 hurricane season in like a lion and out like a lion
The 2024 hurricane season saw a remarkable start that included Category 5 Hurricane Beryl on July 1st –besting Hurricane Emily in 2005 as the earliest Category 5 on record in the Atlantic – and through middle July the busiest start in the 174-year hurricane record books.
Waters fell uncharacteristically quiet, however, after hurricanes Debby and Ernesto in the first half of August, and nearly 3 weeks passed between August 20th and September 9th – typically one of the busiest 3-week stretches of the hurricane season – without a single named storm, the first time that’s happened since at least 1941.
The season quickly made up for lost time in September with a barrage of backloaded activity culminating with Hurricane Helene in late September and Category 5 Hurricane Milton two weeks later. Helene’s catastrophic flooding hundreds of miles inland across western North Carolina and the southern Appalachians was the worst the region had experienced in more than a century. Helene was the deadliest U.S. mainland hurricane since Katrina, and together Helene and Milton were responsible for an estimated $113 billion in damages in the U.S.
By November, activity met hyperactive criteria and in total five hurricanes had struck the U.S., the most of any hurricane season since 2005.
A return to normalcy?
The last two hurricane seasons have been dominated by extreme, unprecedented warmth across the tropical waters of the Atlantic. While water temperatures aren’t necessarily the be-all, end-all, the marine heatwave has been so severe that it’s counteracted other factors – such as a strong El Niño during the 2023 hurricane season – that would have otherwise dampened hurricane activity.
Mercifully, the tropical Atlantic came back to earth this spring and is nearing seasonal averages for the first time in two years.
The cooldown from this time last year is most pronounced in the eastern part of the Atlantic, which tends to be the best predictor in May of hurricane activity later in the season.
All else equal, a cooler tropical Atlantic, especially off northwestern Africa, would favor less overall hurricane activity. It’s an encouraging sign that perhaps overall activity may encounter some guardrails this season.
La Nada sticking around for now
Atlantic waters matter for hurricane season activity, but so do the waters around the equator in the eastern Pacific. That’s where the other major player regulating Atlantic hurricanes ebbs and flows.
El Niño conditions – abnormally warm waters in the eastern equatorial Pacific – tend to reduce Atlantic hurricane activity by increasing storm-busting wind shear in the Gulf, Caribbean, and western Atlantic. Unfortunately the last El Niño in 2023 was hit with kryptonite from the Atlantic’s super-warmth and couldn’t rein in activity. But what about now that the Atlantic has – at least temporarily – lost its superpowers?
The eastern Pacific was under the influence of La Niña conditions – abnormally cool waters – this winter but saw a warming trend into the spring.
Model forecasts for La Niña or El Niño are notoriously bad before about summer, but in January models did suggest about a 1 in 5 chance of warming to El Niño by the peak of the hurricane season.
Instead, the waters of the eastern Pacific have leveled off, landing in a sort of no man’s land between La Niña and El Niño. Models now say the chance of an El Niño for later this summer or fall are about 1 in 10, half what they were earlier this year.
So-called neutral conditions in the eastern equatorial Pacific are less consequential than La Niña conditions, which can enhance the number of hurricanes and increase the risk of U.S. landfalls, and El Niño conditions which can tame hurricane activity.
The best bet for now is neutral – or La Nada – conditions deep into the summer which is better than La Niña, but will need an assist from a cooler Atlantic to offer reassurance for less activity.
National Weather Service offices severely short-staffed to start hurricane season
The most troubling developments going into the hurricane season aren’t what’s happening in the sky or ocean, but rather the systematic dismantling of our hurricane defenses along the coast. Over the past three months, the National Weather Service has lost a decade of its workforce to layoffs, buyouts, and compelled early retirements directed by the Trump administration.
Many local National Weather Service offices are on life support, with some – like NWS Goodland, Kansas – down over 60% of its operational forecasters. Forecast offices in the hurricane zone are also critically understaffed. According to NWS colleagues and officials who’ve spoken to me on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, the Miami Weather Forecast Office is down almost 40% of its operational forecasters and Key West is short-staffed by 30%. The Lake Charles Weather Forecast Office, which covers southwest Louisiana, has one of the highest vacancy rates of any coastal office in the country at 46%. Similarly, neighboring Houston/Galveston is down 1 in 3 forecasters, including its entire management team.
Because of the ongoing federal hiring freeze that continues through at least middle July, these offices are unable to hire new meteorologists to backfill vacant forecaster slots. The National Weather Service and its parent agency NOAA did get permission to shuffle personnel from within willing to relocate to help temporarily tourniquet the bleeding. Of course, moving staff out of other important roles also opens possible vulnerabilities elsewhere in the agency. It’s an undesirable position for the nation’s critical weather warning network on the brink of what’s typically the deadliest, most destructive large-scale weather threat it faces each year.
In the meantime, some critically understaffed local National Weather Service forecast offices are powering down from 24/7 operations for periods of the day, relying on cover from more equipped offices hundreds of miles away from the local forecast area. In March, offices began forgoing important twice-daily weather balloon launches – a mainstay of weather forecasting for more than 60 years. Even in the age of satellites, the data collected from weather balloons launched at over 90 U.S. sites, including in the Pacific and Caribbean islands, can dramatically improve the accuracy of hurricane forecasts.
Unfortunately the cuts to life-saving hurricane forecasts may only worsen ahead. NOAA’s entire research and development arm – known as the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research or OAR – is on the chopping block according to a memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget sent last month. NOAA’s OAR, while research-oriented, develops and maintains critical hurricane forecast tools and models – like the state-of-the-art Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System or HAFS model, one of the only dynamic models to reliably predict rapid intensification. OAR also houses the world-famous hurricane hunters that provide crucial data to forecasters and computer models throughout the season.
Without question, the cuts being implemented or considered will weaken our ability to detect, forecast, and warn against hurricanes this season.
Be ready for your one
Regardless of what the overall hurricane numbers look like in 2025, the science can’t tell us when or where a hurricane might strike this far out. Even if we have only one hurricane this hurricane season (the fewest hurricanes of any season in the reliable record is two), if the one hits where you are, it can be a bad season.
So be ready for your one. Take advantage of the time before a hurricane threatens to have the supplies you’ll need to weather the storm. The two-week disaster preparedness sales tax holidays in Florida are a great way to stock up and save by purchasing qualifying hurricane supplies – including big-ticket items like generators costing less than $3,000 – tax free.
Most importantly, know whether you live in a storm surge evacuation zone and where you plan to go if ordered to evacuate.
For now, the Atlantic looks mostly quiet into the first week or two of June. By the middle of June we may need to watch for some mischief around the Gulf or Caribbean.
We’ll have lots more to say about this and more each weekday in our regularly scheduled newsletter beginning June 1st.
Very GLAD to see your post, Mr. Lowry! 🙂 I can only imagine how inundated you've been - I read the NOAA PassBack document, so I can't imagine how everyone coping with all the mess.
So I'm extra grateful (& relieved) that you're here ⚘
Good job Michael!
Dr. Bernie Loewenthal