HOUSTON – For 20 years now, engineer Dale Link has issued a broad hurricane forecast for the United States (and all over the world) indicating not “how many” hurricanes we’ll have in a given season, but where those storms have a 50-50 chance of making landfall.
RELATED: Another hurricane forecast: where will they go?
He puts these forecasts out in January as an early heads-up using different zones and for Atlantic Hurricane Season 2024, Texas is one of those zones, along with the east coast of Florida. Here’s a look:
Dale claims an 81% accuracy rate and, like all forecasts, some years are better than others. Here is his forecast for 2023, last year:
And below are the tracks from last year, and you can see that they were pretty close. South Texas wasn’t in a zone although there was tropical storm Harold (pretty forgettable flare-up). You can decide for yourself how close Dale’s forecast came to the actual, but I’d say it was reasonable!
- READ MORE: How Texans can prepare for natural disasters
Dale’s forecasting technique is pretty simple: look at all tropical disturbance, depression, storm and hurricane tracks the past one and two years, paying attention to those tracks from beginning to end--those tracks will be followed again in the foreseeable future. You can look at Dale’s webpage where he has all his past forecasts and methodology.
HEADS UP FROM EL NINO!
The most recent forecasts for our current strong El Nino actually take it down to neutral by next August/September. That’s a definite heads up because an El Nino tends to keep hurricanes AWAY from Texas.
RELATED: My blog on Hurricanes and Hunger Games
Without El Nino in place, we are certainly more vulnerable. Here’s the most recent forecast and you can follow that darker purple line on El Nino’s downward trend!
If this forecast holds true (and they are usually pretty good), then El Nino will be gone by the height of the hurricane season.
And, yes, I know it’s only Jan. 3 and I don’t need to be talking about the upcoming hurricane season, but, hey, always watching, always tracking! It’s what we do!
Enjoy a couple of dry days with more rain expected Friday morning.
Email me with questions and comments!
Also, share your photos of all things weather at Click2Pins.com or in the Storm Tracker 2 app!