WeatherTiger's Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook for May 2025

Rest for the weary? Perhaps, in a relative sense.

If it seems like the hurricane off-season gets shorter every year, it actually does. The longer you’ve been alive, the smaller the proportion of your lifespan each annual December-to-May reprieve represents. And if you’ve lived your recent years in Florida or on the Gulf Coast, well, the storms and seasons all just sort of blur together in a tangle of cones, downed limbs, and model spaghetti at this point. The years start coming and they don’t stop coming, just like the most famous band from Smashmouth, Massachusetts once said.

With the official start of the 2025 hurricane season days away, the best I can offer the weary is a seasonal outlook significantly less apocalyptic than 2024, though still plenty busy. With closer to average sea surface temperatures versus last year, WeatherTiger’s forecast models are predicting a most likely outcome of U.S. landfall activity near to slightly above normal. That good news is relative, as there is still about a 60% chance of two or more hurricane strikes somewhere in the continental U.S. in 2025.

Comparing sea surface temperature anomalies on May 27, 2024 and May 27, 2025.

Before we dig into the forecast, a brief bit of introduction for new readers, or those of you who were fortunate enough to have forgotten about me: I’m Ryan Truchelut, Chief Meteorologist at WeatherTiger, a weather analytics and forensic meteorology company in Tallahassee. I have a doctorate in meteorology from Florida State and 20 years of professional hurricane forecasting and research experience under my belt. This is also my fifth season of providing hurricane analysis and dad humor (when appropriate) here at WeatherTiger’s Hurricane Watch, with nary a quiet season yet. Look for a column each week between early June and late October, with more frequent forecasts as the situation warrants. Right now, there’s no immediate early season tropical activity on the horizon, but upper-level winds could turn more favorable for development sometime in early June. I’ll dig in to the possibility of eventual development and June hurricane history in the column next week.

As another bit of orientation, WeatherTiger’s seasonal outlook is different than others because I’m going to spend minimal time talking about how much activity will happen in the Atlantic Basin as a whole. The reason for that is simple: you don’t live in a mid-ocean shipping lane, geothermal vent, or micronation, so overall activity forecasts tell you little about your hurricane season to come. For what it’s worth, we see about 65% odds of an above normal season, with 2025 more likely than not to tally 16 to 20 tropical storms, 7 to 9 hurricanes, 3 to 4 major hurricanes, and an Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) outcome of ~140 units, trending down slightly in the last two months. You can follow daily updates to our seasonal forecast model here.

With the link between overall activity and U.S. landfalls weaker than you’d think, pivoting to an impacts focus allows a more nuanced approach to key outlook predictors. For instance, while La Nina events tend to favor both more U.S. landfalls and more overall activity (and El Nino events the opposite), the relationship between Atlantic sea surface temperatures and landfall risks is less intuitive. Abnormally warm ocean temperatures in the Atlantic’s Main Development Region from Central America to West Africa typically mean more overall activity, but not necessary more U.S. landfalls. Very cool years do see fewer U.S. landfalls, but there’s not much difference in how many major hurricanes strike between years in which the Tropical Atlantic is close to normal and years in which it is notably warmer than normal.

That’s because landfall risks are predicated on not just how many hurricanes form, but where they develop, and how they move and intensify. (Frankly, there’s a lot of pure chance at play too, so predicting a season’s overall landfall risks has a very large uncertainty estimate.) If the eastern Tropical Atlantic is too warm, many of those additional storms can wind up tracking into the open ocean, or being preferentially steered east of the continental U.S. As shown above, that’s why hyperactive seasons in terms of overall activity are most common when a La Nina and warm Tropical Atlantic overlap, but high U.S. landfall years occur across a wider range of sea surface temperature configurations, especially on the Atlantic side.

Correlating 125 years’ worth of U.S. hurricane activity with spring ocean temperature data, several things jump out. First, May anomalies in the Gulf, Caribbean, and even the deep Tropical Atlantic have little relationship with subsequent U.S. landfall activity. Rather, unusual warmth in the far northeastern Atlantic, to the west of Europe, is a more reliable indicator of frequent U.S. hurricane landfalls to come.

That is not only because spring warmth in this region tends to signal that the Atlantic’s Main Development Region will be warm during the peak months of hurricane season, but also that there may be an increased tendency for steering patterns that increase U.S. risks. In 2025, the Tropical Atlantic is generally warmer than average, though much less so than the extremes of 2023 or 2024, and has cooled off somewhat since late March. However, the northern and northeastern Atlantic is quite warm, a potential indicator of threatening steering winds to come.

On the El Nino/La Nina side of the ledger, the Equatorial Pacific is close to true neutral conditions at the start of hurricane season, though global weather patterns retain a Nina-like tilt for the time being. With near normal water temperatures extending several hundred meters down in the Pacific, there isn’t an El Nino or La Nina on deck either. However, a considerable minority of modeling suggests a return of weak La Nina conditions in the final third of hurricane season, which all else equal could draw out the window for U.S. landfall threats through October into early November, like it did last year.

All told, WeatherTiger’s targeted seasonal model for U.S. hurricane strikes is projecting about 5 units of ACE happening over the continental U.S. in 2025, versus a typical 4.0 to 4.5 U.S. ACE units in a season. That corresponds to an 80 to 85% chance of at least one U.S. hurricane landfall and about 1-in-3 odds of three or more, with a 45 to 50% probability of at least one U.S. major hurricane landfall in 2025. Those risks are all slightly above normal, but again, take these probabilities as the uncertain estimates they are. For what it’s worth, there’s only about a 1-in-15 chance of 2025 equaling or exceeding last year’s five U.S. hurricane landfalls. U.S. landfall odds also update each day between now and October at our real-time seasonal modeling page.

No matter the outlook, the return of hurricane season is the time to review your basic storm preps, like completing an emergency kit, knowing what to do if you receive an evacuation order, and trimming your trees if cruel nature hasn’t already flattened them at some point in the last decade. This hurricane season could be calmer than recent history, but it might not. Even if it is quiet, that equilibrium can shatter quickly. Honestly, my biggest fear this year— exceeding even the prospect of a punishing trade embargo cutting off critical LaCroix supplies— is that a long period of modest activity will be followed by an Ian-style knockout punch that catches us unaware and unprepared. My mission, as always, is to keep that from happening by giving you clear, direct, no-drama, and unbiased hurricane forecasts all season long.

So, will the world roll us again in 2025, or will we float on? Somebody once told me: keep watching the skies.

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