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The 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season Could be One of the Most Active on Record!

  • The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, already busy through early August, could be one of the most active on record, according to an outlook released Wednesday by Colorado State University.
  • The CSU outlook calls for 24 named storms, 12 of which are expected to become hurricanes, and five of those hurricanes becoming major hurricanes – Category 3 or on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.
  • This forecast is almost double the 30-year (1981-2010) average of 13 named storms, seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes and is four storms, three hurricanes and one major hurricane more than its last outlook issued in early July.
  • If that forecast holds, 2020 would have the second most number of storms in any season, just behind 2005's 28 storms.
  • CSU's outlook includes the nine named storms and two hurricanes that have already formed, so they expect another 15 named storms to form through the end of the hurricane season.

2020 forecast chart

  • The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season is the first hurricane season on record in which nine tropical storms formed before August 1.
  • The first tropical systems of the season actually formed before the hurricane season ever began on June 1st.
  • Tropical Storm Arthur formed on May 16th and Tropical Storm Bertha on May 27th, and since then, it's been non-stop tropical activity.
  • In fact, Cristobal (June 2), Edouard (July 5), Fay (July 9), Gonzalo (July 22) and Hanna (July 23) were each the record-earliest third, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth named storms.
  • Isaias became the record-earliest ninth named storm in the Atlantic basin, more than a week earlier in the calendar than the previous record, according to Colorado State University tropical scientist Phil Klotzbach.
  • The previous record-earliest "E," "F", "G", "H" and "I" storms in the Atlantic Basin all occurred in the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season.
2020 First Nine Storms map
Graphics from weather.com

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