The 2023 Atlantic hurricane season is the upcoming

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

tropical cyclone A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system characterized by a low-pressure center, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain and squalls. Depend ...

season in the

Northern Hemisphere The Northern Hemisphere is the half of Earth that is north of the Equator. For other planets in the Solar System, north is defined as being in the same celestial hemisphere relative to the invariable plane of the solar system as Earth's Nort ...

. The season officially begins on June 1, and ends on November 30. These dates, adopted by convention, historically describe the period in each year when most subtropical or tropical cyclogenesis occurs in the

(over 97%). The

National Hurricane Center The National Hurricane Center (NHC) is the division of the United States' NOAA/National Weather Service responsible for tracking and predicting tropical weather systems between the Prime Meridian and the 140th meridian west poleward to the 3 ...

(NHC) will begin issuing regular Tropical Weather Outlooks on May 15, about two weeks prior to the start of the season.

Seasonal forecasts

In advance of, and during, each hurricane season, several forecasts of hurricane activity are issued by national meteorological services, scientific agencies, and noted hurricane experts. These include forecasters from the United States

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditio ...

(NOAA)'s Climate Prediction Center, Tropical Storm Risk (TSR), the United Kingdom's

Met Office The Meteorological Office, abbreviated as the Met Office, is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and is led by CEO Penelope E ...

(UKMO), and Philip J. Klotzbach,

William M. Gray William "Bill" Mason Gray (9 October 1929 – 16 April 2016) was emeritus professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University (CSU), and the head of the Tropical Meteorology Project at CSU's Department of Atmospheric Sciences. He ...

and their associates at

Colorado State University Colorado State University (Colorado State or CSU) is a public land-grant research university in Fort Collins, Colorado. It is the flagship university of the Colorado State University System. Colorado State University is classified among "R1: ...

(CSU). The forecasts include weekly and monthly changes in significant factors that help determine the number of tropical storms, hurricanes, and major hurricanes within a particular year. According to NOAA and CSU, the average

Atlantic hurricane season The Atlantic hurricane season is the period in a year from June through November when tropical cyclones form in the Atlantic Ocean, referred to in North American countries as hurricanes, tropical storms, or tropical depressions. In addition ...

between 1991 and 2020 contained roughly 14 tropical storms, seven hurricanes, three major hurricanes, and an

accumulated cyclone energy Accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) is a metric used by various agencies to express the energy released by a tropical cyclone during its lifetime. It is calculating by summing the square of a tropical cyclone's maximum sustained winds, measured ever ...

(ACE) index of 74–126 units. Broadly speaking, ACE is a measure of the power of a tropical or subtropical storm multiplied by the length of time it existed. It is only calculated for full advisories on specific tropical and subtropical systems reaching or exceeding wind speeds of . NOAA typically categorizes a season as above-average, average, or below-average based on the cumulative ACE index, but the number of tropical storms, hurricanes, and major hurricanes within a hurricane season is sometimes also considered.

Pre-season forecasts

On December 6, 2022, Tropical Storm Risk released their early prediction about the 2023 season. TSR expects the season to be 15% below average and for there to be 13 named storms, six hurricanes, and three major hurricanes.

Systems

Other system

On January 16, the National Hurricane Center issued a special Tropical Weather Outlook concerning a low-pressure area centered roughly north of

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. The NHC noted that the low exhibited thunderstorm activity near its center, but assessed its probability of transitioning into tropical or subtropical cyclone as being near zero percent. These thunderstorms may have developed due to the combination of the cyclone's position over the

Gulf Stream The Gulf Stream, together with its northern extension the North Atlantic Current, North Atlantic Drift, is a warm and swift Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic ocean current that originates in the Gulf of Mexico and flows through the Straits of Florida a ...

, where sea surface temperatures were around , and cold air aloft, resulting in high atmospheric instability. This tight cluster of storms was located within a broader storm system that brought snowfall to parts of coastal

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

, including amounts of up to in portions of

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

. Designated by the NHC as ''

Invest Investment is the dedication of money to purchase of an asset to attain an increase in value over a period of time. Investment requires a sacrifice of some present asset, such as time, money, or effort. In finance, the purpose of investing is ...

90L'', the storm prompted

Environment Canada Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC; french: Environnement et Changement climatique Canada),Environment and Climate Change Canada is the applied title under the Federal Identity Program; the legal title is Department of the Environment ( ...

to issue wind warnings for parts of

Nova Scotia Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland". Most of the population are native Eng ...

and

Newfoundland Newfoundland and Labrador (; french: Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador; frequently abbreviated as NL) is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region ...

as the storm approached the Cabot Strait. The system moved ashore eastern Nova Scotia as a slightly weaker storm on the morning of January 17. Meteorologist Rick Knabb, former director of the NHC, noted that the system may have been a subtropical cyclone.

Storm names

The following list of names will be used for named storms that form in the North Atlantic in 2023. Retired names, if any, will be announced by the World Meteorological Organization in the spring of 2024. The names not retired from this list will be used again in the 2029 season. This is the same list used in the 2017 season, with the exceptions of ''Harold'', ''Idalia'', ''Margot'', and ''Nigel'', which replaced ''

Harvey Harvey, Harveys or Harvey's may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Harvey'' (play), a 1944 play by Mary Chase about a man befriended by an invisible anthropomorphic rabbit * Harvey Awards ("Harveys"), one of the most important awards ...

'', '' Irma'', '' Maria'', and '' Nate'', respectively.

Season effects

This is a table of all of the storms that have formed in the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season. It includes their duration, names, intensities, areas affected, damages, and death totals. Deaths in parentheses are additional and indirect (an example of an indirect death would be a traffic accident), but were still related to that storm. Damage and deaths include totals while the storm was extratropical, a wave, or a low, and all of the damage figures are in 2023 USD.

Notes

References

External links

National Hurricane Center Website

National Hurricane Center's Atlantic Tropical Weather Outlook

{{Tropical cyclone season, 2023 Atlantic hurricane seasons Tropical cyclones in 2023