Hurricane season is here, and forecasters say they expect an especially active season this year. An outlook from The Weather Company and Atmospheric G2 predicts 12 hurricanes and 25 named storms.
As many of Earth’s oceans have warmed, weather and climate scientists are studying the correlation between climate change and stronger, more destructive hurricanes. Each summer, warmer water allows these storms to gain strength. With ocean temperatures rising, some say hurricanes have more fuel to go from a category two or three to a category four or five.
One misconception is that global warming creates more hurricanes, but overall, trends show the same number of storms form each year. The difference that scientists are investigating is the increase in strength of many hurricanes in recent years.
Pam Knox, an extension climatologist at the University of Georgia, says a hurricane in such warm waters creates problems for coastal communities in more ways than one.
“They will intensify more rapidly and are also expected to progress more slowly,” Knox said. “If they move more slowly, that means we would get more rain. “It means we will have stronger winds for a longer period of time, which can cause more damage.”
Florida is usually hit the hardest by these Atlantic storm systems, or they are pushed into the Carolinas. Although they often manage to avoid the direct path, Georgia has been hit by several powerful hurricanes in recent seasons, namely Matthew in 2016, Michael in 2018, and Idalia in 2023.
Michael crossed into Georgia as a still-major hurricane and dealt a blow to southwest Georgia and the state’s prized agricultural industry, prompting the governor to call a special legislative session to fund relief efforts.
Will Lanxton, state meteorologist with the Georgia Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, or GEMA, has seen an increase in hurricane damage in Georgia in recent years compared to previous decades, but partially attributes this change to random.
“Honestly, Georgia has been very lucky in the past for a long time,” Lanxton said. “Between 1980, I think 1985, we had Hurricane Kate, but after that, the next time we saw hurricane-force impacts in Georgia was in 2016. So we went almost 30 years without hurricane-force impacts in the state of Georgia.”
Several factors will influence this year’s season. Although the rise in ocean temperatures is considered significant, another key component is that the coming months are expected to see a transition from what meteorologists call El Niño conditions to La Niña conditions. The World Association of Meteorologists predicts a 60% chance of La Niña conditions emerging sometime between July and September of this year.
“When we have a La Niña event, we tend to see more hurricanes in the Atlantic basin throughout the hurricane season because La Niña decreases the amount of wind shear in the Atlantic basin, and hurricanes hate wind shear.” Lanxton said. “So when there are fewer of them, it allows hurricanes to develop and strengthen more easily.”
These stronger storms have been able to travel further inland, causing greater destruction and damage in coastal states like Georgia.
With a busy season likely looming in the Southeast, the state’s largest electric utility is preparing to respond to any storm damage and power outages.
Georgia Power Capital Governance and Support Manager Tom Perkins emphasizes the importance of maintaining preparedness during the offseason, saying the utility can respond more quickly to a storm when they don’t have to take the time to prepare resources.
However, part of staying prepared is evaluating how each hurricane season is expected to affect Georgia. Perkins said Georgia Power is updating its plans and fully preparing for the coming months.
“Each distribution area at Georgia Power Company is reviewing their respective plans to make sure assignments are clear, that we have good support for roles, responsibilities and logistics, and to make sure we are ready to go. ”Perkins said.
In recent years, Georgia Power has worked to increase its efficiency and responsiveness, a necessary adaptation to the trend of stronger hurricane seasons. Additionally, people are increasingly reliant on their electricity and even more so on their Internet access, meaning the stakes are higher than ever when the power goes out.
“We’ve seen that customers now expect faster service,” said Fletcher James, distribution construction manager at Georgia Power. “We’ve seen since COVID that a lot of people are working from home and doing a lot of their things from home, so expectations have increased over the years.”
Although Georgia may have dodged major hurricanes in recent decades, there has been a notable increase nationwide in the financial cost of hurricanes. According to Lanxton, 18 of the 20 costliest hurricanes in the United States have struck in the past two decades, although he notes that some of this data has not been adjusted for inflation.
Rising costs are often due to increased damage, and rising damage is a result of more category four and five systems wreaking havoc on coastal states. But just like adjusting for inflation, Lanxton said there is bound to be more damage over time if there are more things to break: Bigger cities, rising coastal populations and expanding infrastructure will mean they can be broken. suffer more damage than before.
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