Storm season 2024: Experts at Governor's Hurricane Conference braced for active six months
Florida’s emergency managers are fresh off a hurricane season that saw coast-to-coast action from Hurricane Hilary’s deluge in Death Valley to Lee's lathering of coastal Maine and Idalia’s Cat 3 blow to Florida’s Big Bend.
But it’s what’s careening toward them now that is on the agenda at this week's 38th annual Governor’s Hurricane Conference in West Palm Beach as they face six months that threaten to test their mettle, endurance and patience.
About 2,000 catastrophe experts, meteorologists and first responders gathered at the Palm Beach County Convention Center to learn from past calamities and prepare for a season forecast to rival the most active on record.
Hurricane season officially begins June 1 and lasts through Nov. 30.
“This is one of our most important engagement opportunities,” said National Hurricane Center Director Michael Brennan on Wednesday, May 15. “We have representatives from across the state of Florida, across the country and even internationally, so the scope and breadth of this conference is a real opportunity for us.”
While the hurricane conference began Sunday with training sessions and workshops, and lasts through Friday, Wednesday's events were punctuated by keynote speakers such as Brennan and Palm Beach County Mayor Maria Sachs. It also marked the opening of the Palm Beach County Convention Center's exhibit hall, which was filled with hurricane survival and response tools, including ready-to-eat meals, drones and monster mobile satellite trucks.
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With a hurricane-friendly La Niña climate pattern expected to arrive mid-summer to early fall — the height of storm season ― Brennan focused, in part, on the tragedies of a decade’s worth of storm deaths.
He emphasized that of the 100 fatalities in Florida between 2013 and 2023 that were directly attributable to a tropical cyclone, the majority were water-related, including 50 from storm surge and 16 from rough surf and rip currents.
Deaths related to wind, which often steals the spotlight, accounted for 11 direct deaths during the same time period.
“Surf and rip currents have been an underrated killer,” Brennan said. “Because they occur one or two at a time they don’t get the same attention, and they can occur hundreds or thousands of miles away from a storm.”
Category 5 Hurricane Lorenzo in 2019 never made it past the midway point between Africa and the East Coast but eight people died from Vero Beach to Rhode Island in rip currents and hazardous surf produced by the storm.
Most people probably don’t remember Lorenzo, and some may dismiss 2023 as a slow year because Idalia was the only hurricane to make landfall in the United States. But there were 20 named storms in 2023, six more than an average year.
And it was Idalia that dominated part of the discussion Wednesday by emergency managers in rural Florida counties that talked of challenges that included a lack of Internet access and sporadic cell phone coverage ahead of the storm.
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“A huge problem in a rural community is messaging,” said Suwanee County Emergency Management Director Chris Volz. “We went back to old-school paper, putting up flyers at the general store and at the park.”
Suwanee County, which is west of Jacksonville, suffered countless downed trees that blocked roads and took out power lines. The county’s agriculture industry also took a hit, damaging farm equipment, drowning crops and killing scores of chickens.
Volz said the county made the unprecedented move of evacuating its emergency operations center, sheriff’s office, police departments, and all but two fire stations.
This hurricane season, forecasts are calling for between 23 and more than 30 named storms.
Brennan made a plea that people refrain from obsessing over spaghetti models and stop worrying about every tropical wave that leaves the coast of Africa.
Although hurricane season begins June 1, the NHC began issuing its daily outlooks Wednesday, May 15. The outlooks identify areas that have the potential to become a tropical cyclone. About 60 waves come off Africa each season. One in 10, on average, develop into a depression, named storm or hurricane.
"Let us handle the forecast part, that's what we do," Brennan said. "We have to stop chasing individual model trends from cycle to cycle and getting worked up about the GFS shifting this way or the European shifting that way."
Robert Molleda, meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service in Miami, said weather experts are trying to temper concern about the potentially active season. They don't want people to feel so defeated ahead of the season that they think there’s nothing they can do, he said.
“Look back at 2020. It was the most active year on record and Florida did not get hit by a hurricane,” Molleda said. “Last year we had 20 storms, all but three were east of the United States. We have to put it in that perspective, too.”
Kimberly Miller is a veteran journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network of Florida. She covers real estate and how growth affects South Florida's environment. Subscribe to The Dirt for a weekly real estate roundup. If you have news tips, please send them to kmiller@pbpost.com. Help support our local journalism, subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Governor's hurricane conference in West Palm Beach draws thousands
