Hurricane season news: What's happening off the Southeast Coast?

USA Today

2 days ago

Hurricane season news: What's happening off the Southeast Coast?
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Hurricane season will be a busy one, experts say
Dr. Michael Brennan, Director of the National Hurricane Center, said he expected a busy hurricane season and urged people to begin to prepare.
The 2025 hurricane season is off to a peaceful start with no major looming threats, but the National Hurricane Center is keeping watch over a low-risk potential system in the Atlantic Ocean along the Southeastern Coast.
If the disturbed weather remains offshore, it's expected to become a low pressure system and could gradually develop some subtropical or tropical characteristics, the hurricane center said. Sub tropical storms have generally cold cores, and are often associated with upper level low pressure areas, with the highest winds farther away from the center, unlike a tropical storm where the most intense winds are found at the center.
The hurricane center puts the chance of formation at only 10 percent as it moves northeastward 10-15 mph over the next seven days. Michael Lowry, a hurricane specialist with WPLG TV in Miami, said a cold front moving eastward across the United States is expected to sweep the system out to sea over the weekend.
Meanwhile, meteorologist Matt Lanza says images circulating of a forecast showing a storm brewing in early June actually show a "phantom" — a single run of an unreliable model not supported by other forecasts.
Tropical weather experts warn that low-quality forecast data can easily be taken out-of-context during hurricane season, and urge people to be skeptical of weather posts circulating on social media.
Here's a look at what to know about the Atlantic Hurricane season so far:
What's happening off the Southeast Coast?
Local National Weather Service offices in the Southeast are watching along the coast where a low pressure area may form over the next couple of days offshore of Georgia and the Carolinas. The system presents kind of a mixed bag for coastal residents, with a forecast for potentially heavy rain regardless of what happens.
If a low pressure system develops, it's expected to be non-tropical which is good news, because it likely won't have the kind of warm core that can pull in energy from the warm ocean and spin up a low pressure area into a tropical storm. However, the low is expected to contribute to localized flooding risks, whether it develops any further or not, according to the Jacksonville weather service office.
As a result of the clouds and storminess and an expected stalled front, isolated locations in Northeast Florida and Georgia could see up to 4-6 inches of rain through Thursday, the weather service said. Rain chances also are elevated along the coast in the Carolinas., where residents have been enduring lingering smoke from the Canadian wildfires.
The potential low pressure area is part of an old front that drenched parts of Florida on Monday, said Lowry in his June 3 tropical weather newsletter. "The disorganized storminess is decidedly non-tropical but dying cold fronts – a holdover from spring months during the start of the hurricane season – can spawn areas of low pressure that take on tropical characteristics if they linger over warm water long enough."
The broad area of disturbed weather might try to form a "disorganized area of low pressureWednesday evening somewhere off of the South Carolina/Georgia Coastline," said the weather service office in Miami.
Don't trust social media posts about spectacular forecasts
A numerical weather model known as the Global Forecast System, from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, is at the center of the latest social media-fueled meteorology controversy. The model generates data on the atmosphere, temperatures, winds and soil conditions but it's often wildly unreliable at successfully predicting the formation and track of tropical systems.
Its unreliability doesn't stop people from posting random images of its output on social media, where professional meteorologists often criticize the posts for unnecessarily hyping unrealistic scenarios.
Earlier in the week, the GFS as it is known was showing chances of a storm in 10-days to two weeks. However, in a post to the digital Houston-based newsletter The Eyewall on June 3, meteorologist Matt Lanza called it a "phantom." No other model shows any support for such a forecast, Lanza wrote.
The hurricane center and others have long encouraged residents in hurricane-prone areas to not give too much credence to the variety of forecast models widely available publicly, and to stick to the official forecasts and forecasts from trusted local meteorologists instead.
Someone who tries to interpret the models, known as "spaghetti" model maps, without knowing the difference between models and which are more skillful than others 'is probably not helping themselves,' James Franklin, a retired branch chief for the center's hurricane specialists, previously told USA TODAY.
For similar reasons, meteorologists also have warned that people shouldn't be alarmed by the hurricane center's discussions of tropical waves its forecasters are watching. The waves are common in the Atlantic, but fewer than a couple of dozen later become hurricanes or tropical storms.
Storm forecasts: How the National Hurricane Center predicts and tracks tropical systems
Dust and tropical storm Alvin round out hurricane season news
A wave of dust from the Sahara Desert in Africa, a typical summer phenomenon, is reaching the Caribbean and Southeastern U.S. and that should begin to reduce the rain chances over southern Florida, the weather service said.
Dinah Voyles Pulver covers climate change and the environment for USA TODAY. She's written about hurricanes, tornadoes and violent weather for more than 30 years. Reach her at [e-mail] or @dinahvp on Bluesky or X or dinahvp.77 on Signal.