Busy Atlantic Hurricane Season Ahead?

The official start of Atlantic hurricane season is still several weeks away, but the past seven seasons have each gotten off to an early start.

Officially, the Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 through Nov. 30. That time frame was selected to encompass 97% of all Atlantic tropical storms and hurricanes, according to NOAA's Hurricane Research Division.

But it's not 100%.

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You can see in the graph above that a small number of tropical storms, and even hurricanes, have occurred primarily in May and December.

Some have even occurred in other months.

Five years ago, Tropical Storm Arlene formed over the central Atlantic Ocean just days after Easter in April 2017, one of only three April Atlantic storms on record.

We've jumped the gun on hurricane season a lot, recently.

Each of the past seven hurricane seasons has seen at least one named storm form before June 1.

Last May, Tropical Storm Ana formed east of Bermuda.

As you can see in the track map below, not all of these early storms stayed away from land.

In May 2020, the Carolinas were soaked by a pair of tropical storms, Arthur and Bertha.

In 2018, Tropical Storm Alberto made a Memorial Day landfall along the Florida Panhandle, remained intact and took a strange track into Lower Michigan before losing its tropical characteristics.

Perhaps 2016 was the strangest early start to an Atlantic season in recent memory.

Tropical Storm Bonnie soaked the coast of the Carolinas in late-May 2016. But that was preceded by eastern Atlantic Hurricane Alex, only the second known January Atlantic hurricane. Alex eventually made landfall in the Azores as a tropical storm.

This early start also happened in 2012 (Alberto, then Beryl in May), 2008 (Arthur), 2007 (another Subtropical Storm Andrea) and 2003 (another Ana, this time in April). Beryl nearly became a hurricane before coming ashore near Jacksonville Beach, Florida, on Memorial Day weekend 2012.

At least one named storm has formed prior to June 1 in 11 of the last 19 years through 2021. There were a total of 14 out-of-season named storms during that time. The majority of these developed and meandered, or made landfall along the coast from North Carolina to northeastern Florida.

Going back further, according to NOAA's historical hurricane tracks database, 37 storms formed in the Atlantic Basin in April or May from 1851 through 2020, a long-term average of one such early storm every four to five years.

Despite this, the National Hurricane Center has not adjusted the start of hurricane season earlier to account for these pre-season storms. However, beginning last year, they began issuing routine Atlantic tropical weather outlooks on May 15, rather than June 1.

There's no guarantee the 2022 season will have an early start, but there are some ingredients that might tilt the odds toward it happening again.

Ocean water is warmer than usual right now over a broad area of the subtropical Atlantic Ocean near and to the east of the Bahamas and Bermuda, as well as parts of the Gulf of Mexico and western Caribbean Sea.

These are precisely the early-season breeding grounds for named storms as the recent track map above indicated.

(MORE: 2022 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook)

Warm water alone doesn't guarantee a tropical storm. Dry air or shearing winds could be in place to squelch any pre-June 1 development.

However, with La Niña now expected to last through summer, possibly into fall, that could reduce these shearing winds that are hostile for tropical development.

Frankly, it's hard to bet against any streak, including seven consecutive early-start hurricane seasons.

If anything, this is a reminder that now is a good time to develop or refresh your hurricane plan.

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.