6 Takeaways From The 2024 Hurricane Season, According To the National Hurricane Center

Changes Coming This Hurricane Season From NHC

"What category is it?" "What's the wind speed?"

Those are the basic elements asked about when it comes to hurricane forecasts. But last year's destructive season provided several reminders that we must pull back the curtains even more when getting informed about a storm.

Those reminders and more were presented recently by National Hurricane Center warning coordination meteorologist Robbie Berg in a hurricane awareness webinar on these six lessons learned from the 2024 season:

1. Water Is Deadliest, Not Wind

-85%: That's the percentage of deaths from tropical cyclones in the U.S. caused by rainfall flooding, storm surge, rip currents/surf and marine incidents, based on 2013-23 statistics.

-Last year followed suit: Water accounted for 127 U.S. deaths that were directly tied to last year's hurricanes, which is about 59% of the total for all hazards last year. Hurricane Helene's flooding rainfall caused 95 of those deaths.

-Deadliest water threats can happen far from landfall: Helene made a Category 4 landfall in Florida's Big Bend region, but all nine storm surge deaths were much farther south in Pinellas County, or in the Tampa Bay region. And a majority of its rainfall flood fatalities happened hundreds of miles inland in North Carolina and Tennessee.

“That’s a lesson to keep in mind – both the water from rainfall and the water from storm surge does not have a direct linkage to exactly where landfall occurs," Berg said.

2. Tornadoes Can Be Intense

-Last season had the third-most on record: Tropical storms and hurricanes can vary greatly when it comes to how many tornadoes they produce, so this threat is sometimes overlooked. Last year's hurricanes were prolific, with a combined 185 tornadoes from Beryl, Debby, Helene and Milton. Only the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons had more.

The death toll from those tornadoes was 10, which was the second-most behind 2004.

-Several intense twisters: Most tornadoes from tropical storms and hurricanes are on the weaker end of the Enhanced Fujita Scale (EF0 to EF1), but last year was unusual with six that were rated EF3 from four different storms, with Milton accounting for three of those in Florida.

Berg said these tornadoes can sometimes arrive long before a hurricane makes landfall, so those making last-minute preparations sometimes have to contend with this threat.

3. Wind Gusts Can Be Deadly Far Inland

-79 U.S. wind fatalities: That was the combined toll from Beryl, Debby, Helene and Milton, which is the most in a year since at least 1963. Helene accounted for 62 of those deaths, with a majority of them in Georgia and South Carolina (50 total).

In general, the faster a hurricane is moving, the farther inland its damaging wind gusts can spread. That's especially the case when a hurricane makes landfall at high-end intensity like Category 4 Helene, since it takes those winds longer to wind down.

Wind gusts reached 80 to 100 mph in the Augusta, Georgia, area, and gusts hit 100-plus mph in western North Carolina's mountains.

4. Rapid Intensification Is Difficult To Forecast, But Progress Has Been Made

-34: That's how many times rapid intensification happened in Atlantic storms last year, nearly twice the number of an average season. This at least 35 mph increase in wind intensity in 24 hours or less can happen multiple times in the same storm. It's important, especially when it happens close to the U.S. like we saw in Helene and Milton.

Reinforcing this is the fact that the nation's 10 strongest hurricane strikes were all tropical storms three days before landfall.

-Improvement In Recent Years: "Rapid intensification is and will likely continue to be a problem but there’s at least hope that we’re getting better at forecasting these events," Berg said in reference to improved intensity forecast statistics over the past five years when compared to 15 years ago.

5. Unexpected Storm Development Can Still Happen

That was the case in 2024 with Hurricane Oscar, which hit Grand Turk Island as a Category 1 less than 24 hours after it was first deemed a tropical storm. It then struck Cuba as a hurricane a day later.

Oscar never had a high chance of development given there was very little signal in the model guidance. Its tiny size likely played a role in the tepid development signals, which provides another example of how small storms are notoriously difficult to forecast.

6. Forecast Consistency Is Key

Berg emphasized the NHC's continued philosophy of not lurching the forecast path from one direction to another based on model changes that can happen run-to-run multiple times a day, or what he called the "windshield wiper effect."

"On the whole, NHC’s forecasts are more accurate and more consistent than the models we use to make the forecasts," he added.

He mentioned that flip-flopping the forecast with each model run "causes people to lose faith and trust in the forecast itself."

Instead, the better approach is to follow longer-term trends in the models and massage the direction of the forecast path as those trends evolve.

Chris Dolce has been a senior digital meteorologist with weather.com for nearly 15 years after beginning his career with The Weather Channel in the early 2000s.