How To Predict A Hurricane

Hurricane season officially begins on June 1st, but researchers at Colorado State University are already busy working on the forecast for the 2026 hurricane season. Senior environmental reporter Tom Bayliss spoke with senior research scientist Phil Klotzbach to help us understand what is needed to make accurate storm predictions. What's the single most important idea that they should understand about the difference between the air pressure and the wind speed when they see a hurricane forecast? Yeah. So normally, you know, the wind and the pressure are very closely related because basically the pressure is looking at, say, in the eye of the hurricane. So where it's basically right in the center. But you look at, you measure the atmospheric pressure. And the reason why we have winds in a hurricane is because of a difference in pressure between kind of what's going on outside of the storm, kind of in just like the environment around it versus what's what's in the what's the rate at the center. And so if the pressure in the center of a hurricane is very low tends to be a stronger storm. So if you look historically and you look at wind versus pressure and how much damage storms cause, they both are very strongly correlated. If you have a lot of strong winds and hurricanes tend to cause a lot of damage, but the pressure actually correlates a little bit better with the overall damage. In recent years, several Gulf storms, Milton had strengthened very quickly. Either out and and go for just for landfall. What specific conditions in the Gulf make that sudden jump and strength likely? Obviously, that's a big topic right now is rapid intensification. And are these storms undergoing rapid intensification? You know, more than they used to. It kind of depends on what threshold you look at and exactly where. But certainly rapid intensification is something, you know, it can obviously pose a challenge, you know, in terms of getting ready preparedness. But one good thing is that the national hurricane Center, forecasts of rapid intensification have improved, tremendously in recent years. And in the case of Hurricane Melissa last year, they actually forecast that to become a category five hurricane, when it was only a category one. And that was due to just a lot of really good solid model guidance. So Florida is kind of had a streaky hurricane history. We seem to swing between these long, quiet stretches and and these clusters of damaging hurricanes. And in your view, is the hurricane risk for the Gulf Coast. Does that tend to come in bunches or are they spread out more evenly over time? You are going to get these noisy things. For example, 2004 2005 for over and over and over again. Then if you had gone to Vegas at the end of 2005, and then I bet Florida is going to get zero hurricane landfalls in the next ten years, you got some really good odds. I already given you some really good idea, but yet Florida did. For ten years, not one hurricane hit the state. Which the odds are extremely low if you were to base it on historical odds of going ten years in a row with no hurricanes. But then since then until 2025, Florida was hit quite a bit. But obviously even in 2020, extremely busy season, 30 storms in the Atlantic and not one hurricane in Florida. So, you know, it's just it's so there are these kinds of, you know, you can get lucky or get unlucky. But overall, you know, Florida does have a large amount of coastline. So there is a fairly significant a part of the, you know, physically, there's a large enough area of coastline that the odds of it getting any year historically are higher than any other state. Late season Gulf storms in October and November. The storms and gulf in the Gulf can be especially dangerous for Florida. In simple terms, what makes late season storms different from the ones earlier in the season, if anything? Historically, about 15% of year storms form in October November, but over 50% in the Caribbean and the Caribbean, and storms form in the Caribbean. Late in the season. There's a lot of really warm ocean water down there. And so normally kind of the rest of the Atlantic, it's not so conducive for storm formation. But the Caribbean can be extremely conducive. Those storms can just kind of can go west and make landfall in Central America. But sometimes if there's kind of an area of low pressure, it can pick up the storm and take it north or northeast. Those will be the storms, obviously, that has significant impacts to the US. Obviously, you know, it was late September, so much like Hurricane Helene, obviously like Hurricane Ian late in September. But then also you even have storms and in October, like Hurricane Michael in 2018, they come out and we cannot see goes in north or a little bit northeast, causing all sorts of significant impacts. So basically late season storms can become quite intense in the Caribbean. And then if you just have kind of an area of low pressure that kind of pull that storm up and can cause really significant problems. For Florida up into the northern Gulf.