Hurricane Season 2017

This hurricane season has been brutal — but it's not over yet. What's coming next?

We’re finally past the peak of Hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean. This is welcome news for folks who live along the coast, but by no means are we out of the woods yet. Hurricane seasons—especially years this active—can crank out some ugly storms in October and even November. The arrival of fall is a sign that the season will soon start to calm down, but we shouldn't lower our guards quite yet.

In some ways, the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season has only been slightly above average so far. We’ve seen 13 named storms, eight hurricanes, and five major hurricanes. The average season sees 12 named storms, six hurricanes, and three that reach cate three or stronger. This is in line with most major forecasts that called for an above-average hurricane season this year.

But the speed with which this season spat out extremely strong storms is far from typical. Eight consecutive named storms strengthened into hurricanes within a 45-day period between mid-August and late-September, and six of those eight storms made landfall as hurricanes. Even worse, three of those storms—Harvey, Irma, and Maria—hit land as a category four or five.

We still have two full months left to the hurricane season, and it looks like conditions will be favorable for storms to develop through at least the first half of October. The National Hurricane Center’s forecast on September 28, 2017, highlighted an area of interest in the Caribbean for potential tropical cyclone development over the next five days. Models are suggesting that more activity is possible in the western Caribbean within the next week or two.

The western Caribbean is about where you would expect storms to start forming around this time of the year. The origin points for tropical cyclones depend on the season. Storms commonly get their start out near Africa during the peak of the season, when the heat of the summer helps tropical waves form on the African continent and push out over the water. These are the seeds that sprout storms like Irma and Maria, ones we can sometimes watch for weeks before they ever threaten land.