Photo via Colorado State University
Experts at Colorado State University’s Tropical Meteorology Project have updated their seasonal outlook for the 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season to include even more storms than before.
The new forecast boosts the expected number of total named storms to 20, up from 16 first seasonal outlook released in April and 19 in the last update issued in June.
The forecast also includes the probability of at least one major hurricane making landfall, with the chances at 69% for the entire U.S. coastline, 45% for the East Coast through the Florida Panhandle, 44% from the Panhandle west to Brownsville TX.
There are a few reasons CSU made the update they did to the hurricane forecast, one of which is the temperature of water across the Atlantic Ocean.
There are also indicators that the global weather pattern El Nino may not develop. Without El Nino, there is the potential for storms to become stronger due to the lack of stronger wind shear.
Another factor is the West African Monsoon. This impacts our tropical forecast because many of our tropical disturbances start out as waves coming off the west coast of Africa.
You combine storms from Africa working west through warmer than normal ocean waters, with very little wind shear to slow them down or weaken any additional development, and an active hurricane season is in the works.
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