Meteorologists warned as early as February that this hurricane season could be catastrophic, and they turned out to be right.
Above, Senior Meteorologist John Morales, who went viral with this tearful response (see below) to the rapid intensification of Hurricane Milton, some weeks ago, sums up what we know about the season that just ended.
(FYI, Morales misspeaks and says “millions” when he means “billions” at the end, where he describes hurricane damages)
he 2024 hurricane season is ending. It was catastrophically impactful.
The backloaded season ended with seven hurricanes forming in six weeks between Sept. 25 and Nov. 5 — the most ever observed for this period. Four of those were major hurricanes: Helene, Kirk, Milton and Rafael. Twelve named storms formed after the climatological peak of the season in early September.
The season also featured a record-breaking start, followed by a peak-season lull.
Hurricane Beryl was the earliest Atlantic basin Category 5 hurricane on record. It razed Carriacou and neighboring Grenadine Islands in the southeastern Caribbean at the beginning of July, then went on weaken but still cause significant storm surge flooding across parts of Texas and Louisiana.
After Beryl dissipated on July 9, almost a month passed until Hurricane Debby formed in early August and went on to strike Florida’s Big Bend. Only one other storm formed in August — Hurricane Ernesto, which impacted the northeastern Caribbean and Bermuda. It took until mid-September before the hurricane season really got going in earnest.
Hurricane Helene made landfall as a Category 4 storm on the Florida Gulf Coast on Sept. 26. The storm caused catastrophic flooding across the southern Appalachians, widespread wind damage from the Gulf Coast to the North Carolina mountains and storm surge flooding along portions of western Florida. Preliminary data indicate that Helene was the deadliest hurricane to affect the continental U.S. since Katrina in 2005, with more than 150 direct fatalities, the majority of which occurred in North Carolina and South Carolina.
“Well over 100 million dollars of damage….”
This is not the first time I’ve caught him saying “million” instead of “billion” to describe the damage from hurricanes.
<insert Dr. Evil clip here>
right, I meant to caveat that in the post