It always helps to provide perspective on some things. In a normal Atlantic hurricane season, roughly twelve named storms form with six of them becoming hurricanes. Virtually every weather expert including me expected an above normal 2020 season. In May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) wrote, “The outlook predicts a 60% chance of an above-normal season, a 30% chance of a near-normal season and only a 10% chance of a below-normal season.” By August, NOAA increased the chance of an above-normal season to 85% with the expectation of 19 to 25 named storms. At the time of writing, we are very close to the 30th named storm of the year forming.

I provided that context for a couple of reasons. It establishes that a busy season was expected by tropical weather experts. However, it also highlights just how ridiculously busy the season has been. On the morning of Friday November 13th, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) gave a broad area of low pressure (Tropical Depression 31) in the central Caribbean Sea a 90 percent chance of further development within the next 2 to 5 days. From the NHC forecast discussion, the following statements caught my meteorological eye, “Convection has increased and become a little better organized overnight with scattered moderate to strong from 13N-16N between 67W-75W….Additional development is expected, and a tropical depression will likely form within the next day or two as it moves slowly westward over the central and western Caribbean Sea.”

Central America recently experienced devastating conditions from Hurricane Eta and now places like Nicaragua and Honduras are on alert again. Even if the storm does not reach named status (and it likely will), the disturbance will still cause heavy rainfall and gale warnings in the Caribbean and Central America. The National Hurricane Center is also still monitoring the remnants of Post Tropical Cyclone Eta off the Carolina coast and Tropical Storm Theta near the Azores.

If the system in the Caribbean is named, it would be Tropical Storm Iota. At this rate, every named storm is just piling on to the record for most named storms in a year. This year surpassed the record set in 2005 (28 named storms). For additional perspective, Iota would be the 9th storm in the Greek Alphabet, which is three storms away from a normal season. Keep in mind, the Greek naming started after the 2020 Atlantic name list was exhausted.

The active 2020 season certainly and reasonably brings forth questions about the role of climate change. For a “101” on what we know about climate change and hurricanes, my previous Forbes piece is a good start. In that discussion, I reminded the reader that the best scientific evidence points to global warming leading to more intense storms though not necessarily more frequent ones. The scientific literature also points to possible influences on rapid intensification, forward motion, and poleward strengthening.

Just this week, a new paper was published in one of the top science journals, Nature. The results argued that North Atlantic tropical cyclones over the period 1967 to 2018 are trending towards holding on to damaging wind potential further inland. I emphasize that the paper was published in the peer-review literature because it set off a Cat 5-Twitter storm of critique and evaluation in some circles. While there are legitimate questions raised by some scientists about the study, I encourage those counter perspectives to be submitted for evaluation in peer review too. The Nature paper looked at an aspect of hurricane risk and climate change that frankly has not received much attention. From that standpoint alone, I find the paper of value even if there will need to be follow-up studies and analyses.

The process of science is to engage and inquire. Dr. Matt Sitkowski is a tropical weather expert and Science-Editor-in-Chief at The Weather Channel. He told me by text, “It’s easy to throw everything into a a computer and see what falls out and then explain it but having a hypothesis with physical underpinning followed by research that confirms it is much more powerful.” Sitkowski’s words are critical as scientists try to frame this extraordinary hurricane season and consume studies like the one in Nature. Sitkowski ended his message by saying, “And some of the best science is not done to confirm a result, but is when everything is done to try and reject it…and when you can’t you may very well be on to something important.”