We haven't even reached the peak of hurricane season yet, so what's next for the active tropics?
Usually, cold fronts help later in the year, but with the warm Gulf waters, we may need to keep watch for storms until October.
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- The peak of hurricane season is still just under a month away, but the tropics have already been quite active.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, updated its 2024 hurricane outlook, and anyway you look at it, it's something we'll need to keep an eye on.
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"They still believe it's going to be an extremely active hurricane season. Initially, they were talking about up to 24 named storms. They've taken it down by a couple, but that's still a hyperactive hurricane season that we're talking about," chief forecaster David Tillman said.
David and chief meteorologist Travis Herzog took a few minutes from forecasting to talk about what to expect for the rest of the season.
Travis noted that a second hurricane usually doesn't spin up until Aug. 26, but as southeast Texas knows, a storm arrived early in Beryl.
"We hope that Beryl is the last that we see of the hurricane season," Travis said, adding that there have been a few times in history where the state has seen multiple hurricane hits in one season.
"Thinking how many storms we've had over the history since records began in 1851, it's just six seasons when we've seen multiple hurricane hits," Travis continued.
The most recent was in 2008, when Hurricane Ike hit our part of Texas, and then Dolly hit the southern part of the state.
In 1942, two hurricanes hit southeast Texas nine days apart.
But 1886 was the roughest of them all. That year, four hurricanes hit. The worst was a Category 4 that went into Matagorda Bay and wiped out the city of Indianola, Texas.
That's the last thing Texans want to hear, but that's also why cold fronts are our friends.
Fronts can cool down the water.
"If we can just get to mid-to-latter parts of October, we can begin to breathe easy," David said. "But with the waters in the Gulf of Mexico so incredibly warm, this might be one of those years that might try to challenge that historical fact. We just need to keep our antennas up probably all the way through October."
Hurricane season ends Nov. 30.
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