TAMPA, Fla. — Forecasters warned in the spring to prepare for the worst this hurricane season.
They were right: Months later, the Tampa Bay area will remember the 2024 season, which ends Saturday, as one of the deadliest and most destructive in more than a century.
After a slow start to the season, Hurricane Debby drenched parts of the region with up to 14 inches of rain in August. Waterlogged soil set the stage for flooding along rivers and low-lying neighborhoods that heightened damage potential for subsequent storms.
In September, Helene was one of Tampa Bay’s deadliest storms in a century. The Category 4 hurricane skirted about 100 miles offshore of Tampa Bay, but still drove surge and rain that killed at least 14 people across the region. It crippled beaches and left Pinellas barrier islands scrambling to reopen ahead of snowbird season.
Days later, Milton, which crashed into Siesta Key as a Cat 3, ripped apart Tropicana Field and toppled a crane into a commercial building in downtown St. Petersburg. Trees crashed into homes and wiped out power for millions of residents.
The extremely active season was part of a larger trend — a streak of landfalls along the Gulf of Mexico that has plagued Florida’s west coast for nearly a decade.
The 2024 season entered a three-way tie for second place among years with the most Gulf landfalls: Five hurricanes struck the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, 2020 and 2024. Just one season was more taxing on coastal residents, when six hurricanes made landfall after roaring through the gulf in 1886.
As the credits roll on this season’s official storm window, here are three defining moments of the 2024 season and what to expect next summer.
Aggressive forecast was mostly accurate
In late May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted this season would be highly active. Warm waters across the Atlantic basin and a likely La Niña phase, in which there is less dry air and wind shear to tear hurricanes apart, would collide and ripen conditions for plenty of powerful storms, they said.
While it didn’t exactly work out that way, many of the predictions did come true.
Hurricane Beryl broke heaps of records in July, making history as the earliest Category 5 hurricane. Beryl also formed the farthest east of any hurricane so early in the season, said Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami.
“That kind of set the stage, I think, for what was going to be a very active season,” McNoldy said.
But expectations were defied when the tropics fell silent during the season’s peak. It was the quietest stretch in 50 years.
“Many people think it’s just El Niño, La Niña and the presence of warm waters that dictates the seasons,” said Jamie Rhome, the deputy director of the National Hurricane Center.
“They are important ingredients, but not the only ingredients.”
Rhome said dry air, African dust and the location of storm seeding are among the factors that influence hurricane formation.
While researchers don’t know exactly what happened, they point to the abnormal activity of African tropical waves that typically cross the Atlantic and form as deadly storms. This year, waves were leaving the coast of Africa too far north, where waters were cooler and wind shear was higher, dampening formation, McNoldy said.
“Had that actually been normal and we did get two or three more long-track, intense hurricanes, then we probably would have met what these seasonal forecasts all called for,” he said. “That was really kind of a missing component.”
What’s more, La Niña never came around during hurricane season, McNoldy said, which also helped 2024 fall short of what forecasters had predicted — there were two fewer hurricanes and major hurricanes than what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had expected.
But the three Gulf storms that rattled Florida, and others that struck the Caribbean, allowed tropical activity to close in near initial predictions.
By every metric, 2024 finished as an above-average season, McNoldy said.
“We had more storms than normal. We had more hurricanes than normal,” he said. “It absolutely was an extremely active season.”
Warm gulf waters drove intensity
This season, like last year, was punctuated by record and near-record water temperatures in the Gulf and the Atlantic.
Warm waters provide fuel to hurricanes.
“There’s no doubt the extremely high water temperatures really stoked this season,” said Bob Henson, a meteorologist and journalist with Yale Climate Connections. “We’ve had more than a year-and-a-half now of ridiculously warm sea-surface temperatures.”
Although the season is drawing to a close and oceans should be cooling on this side of the globe, the tropics are still clocking abnormally high temperatures, Henson said.
“Even more impressive and ominous is that the Caribbean is not only at record warm for Dec. 1, it’s warmer than it normally is at the peak of the season — above where it would normally be in the middle of September,” he said. “Certainly the waters in the Caribbean are warm enough to support a hurricane even now.”
But hurricanes need more than just hot water to form. Low vertical wind shear and humid air are key ingredients. When the summer months wane and cold fronts reign, tropical systems struggle to develop.
Two named storms late in the season showed how warm waters fought atmospheric conditions until the very end, Henson said.
Rafael ballooned to Category 3 in the balmy Gulf in November before fizzling out over those same waters when the atmosphere became unfavorable.
Early models showed Sara could have threatened the west coast of Florida as a powerful November storm. But when the system hooked west into Mexico, it fell apart quickly.
“Had it stayed 100 or 200 miles north, it could easily have been a major hurricane. It could have affected Florida,” Henson said. “So that’s a good reminder that the atmosphere has to participate as well. We’ve got more than enough fuel for more dangerous hurricane seasons.”
High water temperature have persisted for two years already, and there’s no certainty temperatures would drop next season, Henson added.
Next season could repeat
Climatologists are unsure what next year has in store for the tropics, but early signs point to a similar hurricane season to the one that is just ending.
Ocean heat trapped deep below the surface could lie in wait until June, Henson said.
“I personally don’t expect any drastic drop-off,” he said. “We’re a warming planet, and sea surface temperatures tend to take a while to go up or to go down.”
Henson said the atmosphere is currently in a neutral phase — between an El Niño and La Niña — but is expected to steer toward a La Niña this winter. While it’s too early to predict with certainty where conditions will land ahead of next hurricane season, it’s likely another neutral phase will prevail in summer 2025.
It’s not a worst-case scenario, but leaves the door open for another hyperactive season to come, according to Henson.
“I certainly wouldn’t let my guard down next year,” he said.
