Tropical Cyclones

Despite a pause for much of July, and another at the end of August that lasted into the first week of September, the 2024 tropical cyclone season in the North Atlantic ended up being quite a busy affair, thanks in a large part to a very active September & October, and of course SSTSST Sea Surface Temperatures in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico being at all time record highs.

I haven’t examined all the forecasts that predicted a record breaking season, but I’m sure that 2024 ended up being a bit of a disappointment, despite the record SST.

As far as the raw statistics of the matter were concerned I made it
◾The joint 5th for number (two category 5)
◾The 22nd for total ACEACE Accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) is a metric used by various agencies to express the energy released by a tropical cyclone during its lifetime. It is calculated by summing the square of a tropical cyclone's maximum sustained winds, measured every six hours. The resulting total can be divided by 10,000 to make it more manageable, or added to other totals in order to work out a total for a particular group of storms. (162.5)
◾The 31st for total longevity (99 days)
◾The 54th for total distance (27,127 NM)
All data is of course provisional until the HURDAT2 data series is updated next spring.

Dear Diary,
2022 proved to be a below average season in the North Atlantic for the first since 2015. The pundits predictions of an above active season were all proved incorrect, and that, despite the SSTSST Sea Surface Temperatures over a large parts of the spawning ground for tropical cyclones being well above the LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. Combined ACEACE Accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) is a metric used by various agencies to express the energy released by a tropical cyclone during its lifetime. It is calculated by summing the square of a tropical cyclone's maximum sustained winds, measured every six hours. The resulting total can be divided by 10,000 to make it more manageable, or added to other totals in order to work out a total for a particular group of storms. is on the increase, but the linear trend in the bar chart below might be a little misleading, in as much as it’s comparing the pre-satellite era with the increasingly sophisticated satellite era from 1980 onward. The NHC these days don’t miss a thing with their eyes-in-the-sky, and quite a few nascent tropical cyclones life is less than 36 hours. Warmer seas are only one part of the equation in the equation of hurricane frequency, and maybe there are a few factors we don’t even know about that are just as important and have never been considered.