Colorado State University’s (CSU) Tropical Meteorology Project located in the Department of Atmospheric Science has unveiled their 2018 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook. The Outlook, unveiled by Dr. Phil Klotzbach at the 2018 Tropical Weather Conference in South Padre Island, Texas today, projects an above-normal hurricane season. The 2018 Atlantic Hurricane Season begins June 1 and runs through to the end of November.
The effort at CSU is led by Research Scientist Dr. Phil Klotzbach. He received his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from CSU in 2007. Klotzbach has been employed in the Department of Atmospheric Science for the past seventeen years and was co-author on the Atlantic basin hurricane forecasts with Dr. William Gray through 2005. He became first author on the seasonal hurricane forecasts in 2006. Klotzbach developed the two-week forecasts currently being issued during the peak months of the hurricane season between August-October. He has published over two dozen articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of Climate and Weather and Forecasting.
The initial outlook for the 2018 is an active one with 14 named storms, 7 hurricanes, and 3 major hurricanes expected; an average season typically includes 12 named storms, 6.5 hurricanes, and 2 major hurricanes.
The outlook also believes there’s an above-normal chance of a US East Coast or Florida landfall. While the average chance of a major hurricane landfall in the last century is 52%, the outlook calls for a 63% chance of a major hurricane landfall. While the US East Coast and Florida Peninsula has a 31% of a major hurricane landfall, those odds increase to 39% in this year’s outlook. The chance of a major hurricane landfall along the Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle to Brownsville, Texas jumps from a normal 30% average up to 38% this year.
As with previous outlook releases, the study authors caution, “Coastal residents are reminded that it only takes one hurricane making landfall to make it an active season for them, and they need to prepare the same for every season, regardless of how much activity is predicted.”
For the 2018 Hurricane Season, Weatherboy will have meteorologists in the Atlantic and the Pacific to cover storms and to prepare audiences for those storms well before they arrive. Weatherboy is also a sponsor of CSU’s outlooks; as part of that sponsorship, Weatherboy will also feature a FacebookLive broadcast with Dr. Klotzbach to discuss the upcoming season and the Tropical Meteorology Project’s outlook before the start of the season.
