Atlantic Hurricane Season 2023: The El Niño That Didn’t Matter

Each hurricane season is unique. Some seasons are more memorable for individual storms or a barrage of numerous storms (a la Louisiana 2020/2021), but this one was memorable for defying expectations beginning long before the season started.

Here are some of the headlines and themes that this season provided and some of the lessons I continue to learn from this season to the next.

The El Niño That Wasn’t

Long before this hurricane season began, meteorologists and climatologists knew it was going to be different. A conversation that hadn't been had for three hurricane seasons was beginning to take shape: El Niño was coming.

This typically means that hurricanes and systems trying to become hurricanes are battered with dry air and sinking air in the Caribbean. I was ready and I was hoping for a quieter year.

But this hero had a nemesis – record warm water temperatures – and it took out El Niño, which didn’t quite cooperate with the atmosphere anyway.

Water temperatures toppled warmth records in the Main Development Region (MDR) and were warm across the basin outside of the occasional cooling from the upwelling behind hurricanes Franklin, Idalia and Lee.

In fact, the Bermuda High system which is typically a mainstay in the subtropics was gone throughout much of this hurricane season. At times, it was replaced with large areas of low pressure or tropical systems. This is somewhat of a feedback loop where the stronger the high pressure system is, the stronger winds blow across the basin and the cooler waters get. But this year, the opposite occurred, allowing ever-warmer waters.

These record temperatures ousted the effects of the “el nada” to produce an above-average hurricane season with 20 named storms and seven hurricanes, three of them Category 3 or stronger.

El Niño never really produced the wind shear that it's known for, especially for one that became strong later in the season. Shear typically tends to tilt and/or rip apart tropical storms and hurricanes. Winds aloft were actually drastically reversed/reduced compared to average in the MDR.

Wind shear in the Caribbean was the sixth lowest for any peak-of-season (August-October) period dating back to 1979, according to Dr. Phil Klotzbach and CSU. Some analyses during the season showed near-record low wind shear in the eastern Caribbean, which is typically a tropical storm and hurricane graveyard.

El Niño did show up in one way: thunderstorm activity was subdued by sinking air over the Caribbean. Only Franklin and Idalia got their starts there, but never really became potent until leaving the Caribbean.

Hurricane Season Starts Very Early

Right out of the gate and before most of us were ready for hurricane season to begin, on January 16, the first subtropical storm of the year formed. While it never got named by the National Hurricane Center, the system did make waves on social media – and for parts of the East Coast and Atlantic Canada. The system officially got recognized by the NHC in May as the first subtropical storm of the season, but by then it was too late to be named.

The storm lasted for a little more than a day, but was the first landfall of the season. It came ashore in Nova Scotia, Canada, where it brought little fanfare except for the excited scientists.

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Season Restarts Right On Schedule

While there was that unnamed storm, the “A” storm of the season did start right on pace with the official start of the season. Tropical Storm Arlene formed during the afternoon of June 1, but that wasn’t what I’ll remember about it. Arlene was a rare southeastward-moving storm in the Gulf of Mexico. Thankfully, that was the only notable for that storm.

The flurry of activity for the first month of hurricane season kept on keeping on through June. A favorable pulse of rising air across the basin along with the above-average water temperatures led to not one, but two record-breaking tropical storms.

A pair of June tropical storms – Bret and Cindy – had formed by late on June 22, and both in the tropical Atlantic east of the Lesser Antilles. This was the first time that had happened on record. This was also the first time that two named storms were active simultaneously in the basin in June since 1968.

Season Roars To Life in August

Fast-forward now to the end of August for the season’s second flurry of activity, and thankfully, the season’s only major landfall.

August 20th and 21st were quite a time to be watching the Atlantic. Four storms – Emily, Franklin, Gert and Harold – all formed within 39 hours of one another. This tropical cyclone outbreak was a result of another favorable burst of rising air, but now, record-warm waters and el nada were ready to create the first Category 4+ of the season.

After dousing part of the Dominican Republic with up to 20 inches of rain, Hurricane Franklin reached a maximum strength of Category 4 with winds up to 150 mph while it was well north of the Caribbean. Its minimum pressure of 926 mb was notable as the lowest of the subtropics dating back to 1979.

Another Potent “I” Storm Makes Landfall

Before August was over, the dreaded “I” storm came to life in the northwestern Caribbean. Without much room to escape a landfall, Hurricane Idalia took aim at Florida following a drunken rendezvous with Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula.

Idalia made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend Region with maximum sustained winds of 125 mph, making it the strongest storm to traverse that area since 1896.

And that isn’t the only numerical notable that Idalia provided: It also may have set local storm surge records. A storm surge of over 12.6 feet could topple records for both tropical systems and the Superstorm of 1993 in the region. Data analysis is still being completed at the National Hurricane Center as of this writing in late November, but forecasts in the days ahead of landfall expected storm surge up to 16 feet just east of Keaton Beach, where Idalia made landfall.

Idalia caused at least five deaths across the Southeast and is the deadliest storm of the season.

Of course, numbers never tell the whole story.

Storm surge and destructive wind gusts resulted in billions of dollars in damage and losses from Florida’s Southwest to the Carolina coast, where Labor Day events were disrupted after Idalia moved into the Atlantic.

While Idalia provided a lukewarm welcome to residents along Florida’s West Coast amid a lackluster and arid rainy season, it also forced the rescue of dozens of people along Gulf shores as both rain and saltwater intruded into beaches and homes.

(More: Full Recap of Hurricane Idalia)

Strange Tropical Dance (With Zombies!)

The busiest month of hurricane season started with a hurricane eating another tropical storm, a zombie tropical storm and a duo of dancing distressors.

Several storms filled the subtropical Atlantic as September began. Most of them didn’t start there.

As mentioned earlier, Franklin, which was the most notable storm at the time, was now tracking northeast of Bermuda. Enter stage right Tropical Storm Jose, which got in the way and Franklin absorbed it by September 2.

Simultaneously, Tropical Storm Gert redeveloped south of this first tango after dying in a watery grave more than 10 days earlier. Gert was then swallowed by the ghost of Idalia days later with no hopes for re-Gert-gitation.

But this frightful dance wasn’t quite over.

By Late September, tropical storms Rina and Philippe acted more like a pair of grumpy siblings playing the “I’m not touching you” game.

The pair neared each other in the final few days of the month and attempted a Fujiwhara swivel, but instead sheared each other on Sept. 29 east of the Caribbean. Unfortunately, this game pushed Philippe into the Caribbean where it made landfall in Barbuda as a tropical storm and then threatened Puerto Rico. Philippe ended up passing near Bermuda with just a whimper.

What happened to Rina? She just fell apart, not touching anyone.

Five Cabo Verde Storms In A Row

Jose. Katia. Lee. Margot. Nigel.

We usually talk about Cabo Verde storms as those that develop near Africa, pass through the MDR over the course of a week, then strike land in the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, or in the United States.

This year, the missing Bermuda high allowed five straight storms to take the much preferred (mostly) out to sea route.

Without the Bermuda High acting as a North American deflector shield, four of the five storms avoided impacts to land. Four of the five also avoided other storms. (Sorry Jose, it wasn’t your year. Franklin was hungry.)

Thankfully, the most intense hurricane of the year – Hurricane Lee – was in its best shape well away from land, but it did still take aim at Maine and the Canadian Maritimes. A rare Bay of Fundy storm, large Lee made landfall in several Canadian provinces and knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people from eastern Maine to Nova Scotia.

Way before landfall, L​ee underwent explosive intensification, going from a Category 1 to a Category 5 hurricane in just 18 hours on Sept. 7, a pace only matched or surpassed by three other hurricanes in the basin.

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A Year That Had Two Monster Storms Make The History Books Weep

Storm Daniel in the Mediterranean

Occasionally a storm hits so hard that the count of deaths is only an estimate months later. Typhoon Haiyan, Cyclone Nargis and the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 are among the names that fit this list. This year we added another.

Storm Daniel hit Libya, Greece and Bulgaria back in September.

This by itself is not unheard of. They actually have a name – medicane. Medicanes are systems that feed off both relatively warm waters in the Mediterranean and colder air aloft. They are known to form most frequently in September.

But this storm killed at least 11,000 people. Thousands more were missing.

Storm Daniel produced more than 75% of one location’s yearly average rainfall fell in just six hours. This kind of extreme rainfall is now up to 50 times more likely to happen because of climate change. Geography, politics and neglect also contributed to the disaster.

The extreme rainfall devastated the population of Derna, Libya, where it busted through two dams and washed entire families, homes and bridges into the Mediterranean.

By at least one account, the disaster continues today following an emotional tsunami of anguish and a split government’s poor attempt to rebuild the community.

(MORE: Climate Change Connection | Photos)

Hurricane Otis Unexpectedly Takes Out Acapulco

In a night from hell, Otis surprised residents in Acapulco, Mexico, in the very early morning hours of October 25. Expected to come ashore the day before as a Category 1 hurricane, Otis instead surprised meteorologists by explosively intensifying at a rate only seen once before in the basin and became the basin’s first Category 5 landfall on record.

The hurricane may have produced a wind gust of 205 mph in Acapulco, which would settle among the world’s strongest recorded wind gusts.

Otis immediately drew comparisons to 1992’s Hurricane Andrew, which slammed the Miami metropolitan area. A similar number of people may have experienced the eyewall of a Category 5 hurricane in each of Hurricanes Andrew and Otis.

Both the damage and death tolls remain uncertain, but some estimates place Otis atop the list of Mexico’s most damaging hurricanes.

Drone video a month after the hurricane shows the city has a long way to go before it recovers.

More: Otis Recap | Climate Change Connection | Acapulco Before and After Otis’ Strike

Final Thoughts

Otis, Daniel and our January storm remind us that hurricane season continues to bust the seams of the world that we knew.

• Deadly cyclones are occurring outside of where maps tell us they should occur.

• Storms are forming outside of when the calendar tells us they should occur.

• Hurricanes are strengthening at an ever-increasing rate.

I leave you now with a photo that I took in Keaton Beach, Florida, the site of the landfall of Hurricane Idalia, taken months after the storm was gone. I recently drove through that community as well as Crystal River, Steinhatchee and Cedar Key to see how time passed after Idalia and a more recent tornado tore through these communities.

I saw roofs being repaired in Crystal River where a tornado had just hit days earlier. But I also saw walls of debris along the Gulf of Mexico in Steinhatchee and bruised businesses in Cedar Key.

It’s a reminder of what nature has done and what it can do. Photos like this won’t last.

The 2024 hurricane season begins in the Atlantic in just six short months – if it decides to wait that long.

It is always time to prepare for hurricanes and all kinds of severe weather.

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