National Hurricane Center begins issuing outlooks, including a 7-day outlook

Florida Public Radio Emergency Network (FPREN) Storm Center | By Leslie Hudson

The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season is still a little over two weeks away, but the first forecasts start today. The National Hurricane Center began issuing their tropical weather outlooks today, which show the probability of tropical cyclones forming over a given area in the next two to seven days.

Even though hurricane season doesn’t officially begin until June 1, the National Hurricane Center started issuing their outlooks ahead of the season to account for early activity, which has been common in recent years. The NHC started issuing the Tropical Outlook products in mid-May of 2021.

Of the past ten hurricane seasons, eight of them had storms develop prior to the conventional June 1 start date. Dr. Michael Brennan, Director of the National Hurricane Center, says the tropical outlooks will help citizens get a jump start on hurricane season and these outlooks are a quick daily reminder of what might or might not be brewing in the tropics.

Dr. Michael Brennan-National Hurricane Center Director says, “Last year we extended our tropical weather outlook where we forecast the formation of tropical storms out to seven days from five days. So that’s designed to give people a little more of a heads-up situational awareness of a system that could form. It’s going to have that long lead time for systems we have the most confidence in. So there are still systems that happen without as much lead time. But for the most part, that product comes out every six hours starting May 15, all the way through November 30. It’s sort of your basic. Hey, I should check this kind of once a day during hurricane season, see what’s going on.”

Currently, there are no tropical depressions, tropical storms or hurricanes expected to form over the next seven days in the Atlantic Basin. Although a special outlook was issued in late April for a system with a sub-30-percent chance of development, it failed to become a tropical system. That was not part of the regularly scheduled outlooks.