Hurricane season is about to take a breather. But don't get comfortable

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — If you’ve been feeling anxious over the ominous tropical threats that have been spinning up on the horizon recently, you’ll be able to breathe a sigh of relief — at least for a little while.

After Hurricane Erin winds down, three other tropical waves are doing their best to cause trouble but are ultimately unlikely to succeed.

Once they fizzle, hurricane season looks like it will take a brief nap into September.

But don’t get comfortable, says Fox Weather hurricane specialist Bryan Norcross.

Lulls in hurricane season are common. A nearly month-long lull happened last year in late August, then was followed by high activity, including two major hurricanes — Helene and Milton — that caused widespread destruction in Florida and beyond.

“Last year there was a big gap at the end of August into September when we didn’t have anything that was significant,” Norcross said. “Then it was like a switch was flipped in the middle of September and suddenly one storm after the other formed.”

Hurricane Erin has been the biggest threat so far this season, exploding into the top 10% of largest hurricanes of all time.

Shortly after it formed, Erin went through one of the most rapid intensifications of any Atlantic hurricane on record, then went on this week to skirt the U.S. East Coast and send dangerously high surf, storm surge and rip currents onto beaches from Florida to New England.

In the storm’s wake, three new tropical waves have bubbled up, but the National Hurricane Center says none pose a significant threat.

Following the track of Erin, a tropical wave made up of thunderstorms is likely to organize into a tropical depression this week as it moves north in the direction of Bermuda. It will stay well off the east coast and has a high likelihood of becoming a tropical storm or even a hurricane.

If it does develop, it will be named Fernand.

“The only concern for that system is Bermuda and it’s likely to move to the east of Bermuda based on what we know now,” Norcross said. “But I would say forecast for disorganized systems are subject to large errors, so they’ll have to watch it.”

Another tropical wave in the south-central Atlantic is moving west toward the Caribbean and could become a tropical depression at any time. As of 5 a.m. Friday, the National Hurricane Center gave it a 50% chance of developing into a tropical system in the next two days and a 60% chance in the next week.

“The best evidence is that it’s not going to be a factor for anybody,” Norcross said. “There’s still a lot of dry air in the tropical Atlantic that it’s going to have to plow through, and the upper level winds are pretty hostile. So it has this slight window of opportunity to develop … but there’s not indication of it turning north. As a matter of fact, it’s so far south that it might very well run into South America or Central America.”

Finally, a small low pressure system in the middle of the Atlantic well southwest of Hurricane Erin is being monitored but has virtually no chance of development as it moves through dry air.

“It was a non-tropical low-pressure system at the tail end of a front and it had a short potential lifespan and it never was able to transition into being a tropical system,” Norcross said.

That’s when things go quiet.

“There’s no indication of anything for the rest of the month that would be coming this way, and maybe even into September. The computer forecasts are pretty clean for the next couple of weeks,” Norcross said.

Indeed, NOAA’s long-range tropical hazards outlook shows just a couple of areas with low chances of tropical cyclone development until at least Sept. 9. Coincidentally, Sept. 10 is the statistical peak of hurricane season.

Last year, Hurricane Helene formed on Sept. 20 southwest of Jamaica and tracked through the gap between Cuba and Mexico and north into the Gulf. It quickly intensified into a Category 4 hurricane before making landfall on Sept. 27 in Florida’s Big Bend.

Helene caused massive flooding as it moved across Florida, George and the Carolinas. Some parts of North Carolina received more than 30 inches of rain and at least 176 deaths were a direct result of Helene’s winds, storm surge and flooding, according to NOAA.

Just a few days after Helene made landfall, Hurricane Milton formed in the southwestern Gulf. It quickly exploded into one of the strongest hurricanes on record in the Atlantic basin, reaching Category 5 on Oct. 7.

On Oct. 10, Milton made landfall as a Category 3 storm near Siesta Key on Florida’s Gulf coast, then moved across the Florida peninsula and spawned at least 45 tornadoes.

In all, there were 18 named storms during the 2024 season, 11 of them hurricanes and five of those major hurricanes — Category 3 or stronger, according to NOAA. Tropical Storm Sara was the last of the season, forming on Nov. 14. Hurricane season officially ends on Dec. 1.

That shows there’s a long way to go, Norcross said.

“I refer everybody to 2024, the fact that we had an unusual lull,” he said. “There’s no indication that because it looks like we’re going into a quieter period that that says anything about what’s going to happen when we get to the peak of hurricane season.”

Norcross said there’s a La Niña pattern forecast for later in the hurricane season. “The La Niña tends to enhance storm activity in the Atlantic because it creates a wind regime that’s more conducive to storms developing. Based on just that, if you had to put odds on it, there would be more activity in the second half of the hurricane season than in the first.”