2022 Atlantic Hurricane Season Likely to Be Active For Seventh Straight Year, NOAA Says

NOAA's Climate Prediction Center expects anywhere from 14 to 21 named storms, six to 10 of which become hurricanes and three to six of which reach Category 3 status or stronger, according to the outlook.

Put another way, NOAA said there's a 65% chance the season is more active than average, and only a 10% chance it's below average.

This largely agrees with the outlooks issued earlier by Colorado State University's Tropical Meteorology Project as well as The Weather Company, an IBM Business, and Atmospheric G2.

The outlooks cite the increasing likelihood of La Niña persisting into a third straight year and warmer than average water temperatures in parts of the Atlantic Basin among the indicators for another active hurricane season.

Todd Crawford, the author of the TWC/AG2 outlook, says it can best be summarized as "active, similar to 2021, nothing like 2020." The 2021 Atlantic hurricane season had 21 named storms and seven hurricanes.

The phase of ENSO, commonly referred to as El Niño or La Niña, is one of the strongest indicators of how active a hurricane season will be.

Crawford also noted that while La Niña may relax slightly in the summer, forecast guidance has trended toward a continuation of La Niña through the hurricane season, possibly into next winter. NOAA is predicting a 55 to 65% chance of La Niña conditions through November.

Another factor in this forecast is a generally warmer-than-average body of water that stretches west to east across the Atlantic.

Hurricane season generally begins when water temperatures reach the rough threshold of 80 degrees, which usually occurs between June 1 and Nov. 30. That usually happens first in the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea and southwest Atlantic Ocean near Florida, the Bahamas and Leeward Islands.

While some cooling had taken place in the eastern Atlantic earlier in spring, that area is also the last region that sees tropical activity in the basin during hurricane season.

"Overall, the current SST anomaly pattern correlates relatively well with what is typically seen in active Atlantic hurricane seasons," said Klotzbach in April.

These outlooks serve as a reminder that the time to be ready for tropical weather is now, regardless of what hurricane season outlooks expect. Information about hurricane preparedness can be found here.

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