[Proud90sKid]

After an unexpected and prolonged period of relative inactivity in the Atlantic hurricane basin, the season suddenly turned back on in late September. We had two major hurricane landfalls in the US (and Florida in particular) within less than 2 weeks (and three minor hurricane landfalls earlier in the year: Florida in August, Louisiana in September and Texas in June). Helene hit northern Florida as a category 4 hurricane and devastated parts of western Florida south of the eye with tidal surge. I had storm surge get inside but fortunately only a small amount that simply required carpet replacement. My neighbors weren't so lucky and had multiple feet of water in the house. My neighbor across the street also had his boat ripped off the dock and float away during the surge. Most people near me have a huge pile of all of their ruined belongings (and drywall they had to remove due to mold) all over their front yard. It's very sad. Only once seen so many tow trucks coming to take flooded and totaled vehicles away, the other being during hurricane Ian when I worked for a rental car company. So many lost everything. So many businesses that I would frequent are now closed. We only had tropical storm force winds from that but because it was north we got the tidal surge. Western North Carolina had a severe death toll because many were not expecting it to be bad, but even a tropical storm produces significant rainfall and in this case the rainfall flood waters ("flash flooding" as opposed to tidal surge) pooled into the valleys and major areas like Asheville and Boone...like a bowl, causing many to be trapped or worse. Many areas there were completely wiped out with buildings swept off their foundation. Helene had a death toll of at least 225, with over 90 still missing.

Right after Helene, global forecast models were already hinting at development in the Gulf of Mexico but it was downplayed as news/social media hype by meteorologists(justifiably--because many "modeled storms" don't materialize when you are looking over a week out, let alone almost two). However that storm did end up developing and became one of the strongest category 5 hurricanes on record before weakening into a category 3 due to wind shear as it was lifted northeastward into Florida by the jet stream as it began to merge with a frontal system. Not as much of a tidal surge with that, but major wind damage and widespread power outages. It produced massive panic all over western Florida. It was comparable to Irma in 2017 in terms of the fear it produced in advance, while Helene was more of a nasty surprise. Many still don't have power and it was over a week ago. There are so many downed trees on the lines that need to be removed first in order to repair. Every hurricane season is unique.... some like 2021 produce a lot of weak storms while others like 2017 and 2024 produce fewer but more intense storms. I feel like some of this may be due to some contradictory effects that climate change has on tropical cyclone formation in the Atlantic basin. On one hand, the water is warmer, but there are some factors that global warming can also make less favorable for hurricane formation. I do believe that while for some reason the season as a whole was stunted in storm count(relative to professional expectations, but not to the average), the number of major hurricanes (and in particular the never-before-heard-of June cat. 5 in the Caribbean) was related to the very warm sea surface temperatures and high ocean heat content that was present in the basin this year. The ocean heat is like fuel. Fuel doesn't burn or do much of anything unless it is lit, but once a proper spark has been created, it can produce a massive fire quickly. Milton actually reached the theoretical maximum potential intensity for a hurricane over water of that warmth and was additionally the strongest tropical cyclone globally in 2024 (west Pacific generally outhits the Atlantic in terms of intensity of storms due to having some warmer waters, but this year the tropical Atlantic/gulf/Caribbean are all warm compared to average).