Reliably Austin
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Hurricane Season Is About To Begin, And Forecasters Expect It To Be Busy

Gabriel C. Pérez
/
KUT
Areas along the Texas coast are still recovering from Hurricane Harvey.

Residents of Texas and Puerto Rico are still recovering from the last hurricane season, as the next season is set to start. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration predicts 2018 is going to be an active one.

“My team and I at NOAA are predicting a 75 percent chance that the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season will either be near normal or above normal," said Gerry Bell, the agency's lead seasonal hurricane forecaster.

Bell said it’s not just people along the coast who are susceptible to the deadliest threat from hurricanes – flooding.

“More than 80 million people in the United States live in areas that could be impacted by a hurricane," he said. "Only a fraction of these people live along the immediate coast."

A systemnear the Yucatan Peninsula is expected to move north into the Gulf of Mexico in the next few days. The National Hurricane Center gives it a 70 percent chance of becoming a tropical cyclone in the next 48 hours and a 90 percent chance in the next five days. If it does form, it’s expected to track north, making landfall east of Texas, putting the state on the dry side of the system.

The season officially starts June 1 and runs through November.  

Trey Shaar is an All Things Considered producer, reporter and host. Got a tip? Email him at tshaar@kut.org. Follow him on Twitter @treyshaar.
Related Content