TEXAS TROPICS

How do you know when a new hurricane season is approaching? When Colorado State University , the foremost authority of cyclone predicting, comes out with their annual preseason predictions. One of the biggest factors in this year's forecast is the expected El Niño, which should be in full force come the meat part of the season starting in August. El Niño, if you don't know, typically means less tropical activity in the Atlantic basin. Of course, if we go back to August of last year, where we were in a 3rd year La Niña, which typically means more Atlantic activity, you'll remember we had ZERO named storms in the month of August. It was the first stormless August in 25 years, and just the 4th since 1930. We also went 60 full days, from July 4th through September 1st without a named storm in the Atlantic, the 6th longest in-season stormless streak on record. So you'd almost think we were in the midst of El Niño last year. That stormless August last year really put a dent i...

Waking up from a long winter's nap with a new hurricane season just beyond the horizon. We're so close, in fact, the 2023 preseason predictions should start trickling in within the next couple of weeks or so.  Meanwhile, the WMO ( World Meteorological Organization ) had a retirement party earlier this week. Two systems from last year's season get retired, Ian and Fiona . Ian Hurricane Ian becomes the 13th storm that starts with the letter "I" to get retired ( 14th if you count the Greek letter Iota in 2020 ). The letter "I" easily leads the pack for the most retired storms. It wasn't until post-season analysis that Ian got an upgrade to a category 5 hurricane after it crossed Cuba and entered the southeastern Gulf of Mexico. This makes Ian the 1st cat 5 in the Atlantic basin since Lorenzo in 2019, and the 1st cat 5 in the Gulf since Michael in 2018. Ian struck and crossed Cuba as a cat 3 blow on Sep. 27. A day later, as it was nearing the south...