When a hurricane suddenly explodes in strength just before landfall, communities can lose precious hours to prepare. A new forecasting method developed by a team led by scientists at the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research could help change that.
Scientists say the tool may identify Atlantic storms with higher odds of rapid intensification up to five days out.
What's happening?
A research team led by Christopher Rozoff, a scientist at the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research, created a statistical forecasting method targeting rapid hurricane intensification, one of the hardest parts of storm prediction, according to a National Center for Atmospheric Research writeup in Phys.org.
Forecasters generally use the term rapid intensification when a storm's winds rise by 30 knots, or about 35 mph, within 24 hours. Surges like that made hurricanes including Michael and Otis especially hazardous because they strengthened faster than computer models had expected, leaving some communities little time to adjust.
Researchers built the tool using NOAA Global Ensemble Forecast System hurricane forecasts for the Atlantic and eastern Pacific from 2019 through 2024. They examined 55 factors tied to storm structure, ocean temperatures, and atmospheric conditions, and then applied a logistic regression model to calculate the odds that a storm would intensify rapidly.
Testing showed the approach could provide useful advance warning, especially in the Atlantic. There, it identified elevated rapid-intensification risk as far as five days ahead, while in the eastern Pacific that window was about three days.
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Why does it matter?
Extra lead time can change how people respond to a storm. Systems that seem relatively limited at first can quickly become severe threats, forcing families, hospitals, and emergency officials to make urgent decisions.
In 2024, Hurricane Helene reportedly strengthened from a relatively weak tropical storm into a major Category 4 hurricane within two days before striking Florida, and it was blamed for about 250 deaths across several Southern states. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey also rapidly intensified before landfall in Texas, helping drive catastrophic flooding and an estimated $160 billion in losses.
Forecasting misses during Hurricane Michael illustrate the problem. After the storm formed in the Gulf as a tropical storm in 2018, forecasters expected it to reach no more than 70 mph, but it instead grew into a Category 5 hurricane that ravaged parts of Florida's Panhandle and caused an estimated $6 billion in damage to fighter jets at Tyndall Air Force Base.
What's being done?
The researchers say the technique is meant to complement, not replace, standard hurricane models. They also found it could help show which projected storm tracks are most closely linked with rapid intensification, giving forecasters more insight into how a hurricane's path may influence its strength.
Hurricane behavior depends on multiple factors interacting at once, including warm water and winds higher in the atmosphere. Pinpointing the most dangerous combinations could give emergency officials a clearer sign that action is needed before a storm takes a sudden turn for the worse.
According to the team, the next step is to refine the method further by studying additional years of hurricane activity and trying it with more forecast models.
"The advantage of this new technique is to provide a tool to forecast rapid intensification even further out," Rozoff said. "There are a variety of ways to strengthen these predictions. The goal is to give forecasters enough information so they have confidence days in advance of when a hurricane is most likely to rapidly intensify."
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