This Hurricane Season Could be Especially Dangerous

Hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean basin is officially underway – and it’s looking like this year could be another for the record books.

Hurricane season runs annually, from June 1 to November 30. And this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) is predicting a busier than average season, saying there is a 60 percent chance that this season will be more active than normal.

“The agency is forecasting a range of 13 to 19 total named storms (winds of 39 mph or higher),” NOAA writes. “Of those, 6-10 are forecast to become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher), including 3-5 major hurricanes (category 3, 4 or 5; with winds of 111 mph or higher). NOAA has a 70% confidence in these ranges.”

Why the certainty that this year will be more active than most? The forecasts cite weak wind shear, which allows storms to form more easily, and the potential for higher activity from the West African Monsoon, which is often a starting point for Atlantic hurricanes.

But one of the biggest factors is higher than average ocean temperatures in the Atlantic basin where hurricanes typically form. This is a continuation of a longer term trend of warmer oceans resulting, in part, from climate change. Warm water is fuel for hurricanes, amping up the amount of moisture they can carry and rallying greater wind speeds.

This hurricane season could be more dangerous than even the forecasts warn, however – because of staffing cuts and spending freezes at agencies at the forefront of the climate crisis like NOAA, the National Weather Service, and FEMA.

Since just the beginning of the year, more than 550 employees have left or been fired from the National Weather Service, representing 10% of its workforce and leaving field offices woefully understaffed. At the same time, a proposed budget from the White House would cut NOAA’s funding by almost 30 percent, including for climate research and “virtually eliminating NOAA's research functions for weather, limiting ocean data observations and decreasing funding for new satellites.”

These cuts could seriously hamper both the National Weather Service and NOAA’s ability to research, track, and report on dangerous hurricane activity, putting lives at risk.

“Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life,” an open letter from five former weather service leaders reads. “We know that's a nightmare shared by those on the forecasting front lines — and by the people who depend on their efforts.”

These disruptions could include forecasts that lead to evacuations of the wrong coastal areas when a hurricane does strike.

There are serious economic implications here as well.

“With one third of the US economy—from farming to trucking to tourism—being sensitive to weather and climate, the NWS provides an overall benefit of $100 billion to the economy. This is roughly 10 times what the service costs to run, according to an American Meteorological Society white paper,” Scientific American reports. “Recent improvements to hurricane forecasts alone have saved up to $5 billion for each hurricane that hit the US since 2007, according to a report by the National Bureau of Economic Research—a nonpartisan, nonprofit economic research organization. In comparison, the NWS’s entire budget for 2024 was less than $1.4 billion.”

These concerns are stark, especially when coupled with cuts at FEMA, the nation’s disaster response agency.

FEMA has faced significant budget cuts and staff reductions, including the elimination of major grant programs like Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) –a key program helping communities become more resilient to a changing climate – since the Trump Administration took control in January. These cuts have raised concerns about FEMA's ability to respond to disasters, particularly during hurricane season, and have been criticized as undermining disaster preparedness and recovery efforts especially in light of increasing climate change-fueled disasters.

Since January, the agency has lost 2,000 full-time employees out of a workforce of approximately 6,100 full-time staffers. That’s not even counting the thousands of part-time employees who respond when disaster strikes. And FEMA’s cancellation of key grant programs, including the BRIC program, which provided funding for community-level emergency preparedness efforts, and the National Hurricane Program, which offered disaster training, has left communities reeling and simply underprepared for what Mother Nature might be ready to throw at us this hurricane season.

Essentially, our ability to forecast weather and climate disasters like major hurricanes has been curtailed at the same time that our ability to prepare for and respond after the fact has been hobbled.

What You Can Do

Times like these lend themselves to feelings of hopelessness – but that’s the wrong way to look at it.

Yes, we are staring down the barrel of a potentially challenging time, when science is undervalued and shortsighted decision-making seem to rule the day. But hope is what sets us apart and what is going to get us out of this mess.

Now is the time to educate ourselves about what we can do to fight the climate crisis at its core and change course for a better, more sustainable future.

You can start by joining Climate Reality’s REALITY Tour: Online Experience.

With the online experience you can check out exclusive content from stops on our global REALITY Tour, including former Vice President Al Gore’s world famous presentation on the climate crisis and its solutions, presented in multiple languages.

What are you waiting for? Be part of the REALITY Tour: Online today.