SAVANNAH, Ga. — As the third named storm to emerge during November, Tropical Storm Sara serves as a reminder that the Atlantic hurricane season hasn’t quite ended.
Sara formed in the western Caribbean Sea before making landfall Thursday on the northern coast of Honduras, dumping torrential rains in a slow weekend crawl across parts of Central America. The National Hurricane Center in Miami said the storm could dump up to 40 inches of rain in some areas and was expected to move over Belize on Sunday before dissipating over the Yucatan Peninsula early today.
Sara follows two other named storms so far this month. Tropical Storm Patty brought heavy rain to the Azores and dissipated without striking land. Then Hurricane Rafael struck Jamaica and the Cayman Islands before tearing across Cuba as a Category 3 storm.
That has made for an unusually active final month of the hurricane season, when forecasters typically see a single named storm every year or two. And the 2024 season still has two weeks to go.
The hurricane season for storms in the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico officially runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.
Though named storms have formed before and after that period, hurricane season reflects the months when weather conditions are more favorable for producing tropical storms and hurricanes. Ocean temperatures must reach at least 79 degrees to fuel hurricanes.
Hurricane season is also when the upper atmosphere tends to have reduced wind shear, or changes in wind speed and direction that tear hurricanes apart.
Those hostile winds tend to ramp up later into the fall, making it more difficult for November storms to form, said Levi Silvers, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University.
“We have the water temperatures to allow for these storms to form,” Silvers said. “But it’s increasingly unlikely we’re going to get the conducive winds.”
Based on the 30-year period from 1991 to 2020, November typically sees one tropical storm every year or two. Storms that strengthen into hurricanes are rarer during the season’s final month, with one occurring generally every two years, according to the hurricane center.
