Dr. Kim Wood

So they'll mention that they've got this typhoon and it will be, say, the equivalent of 80 miles an hour.

And we'll be like, okay, maybe not that bad, but...

We might dismiss it as, oh, that's just a category one.

I don't dismiss category ones, but it is the lowest on the hurricane scale.

But because they're using that 10-minute average, if you did a one-minute, it would actually be a higher value, which is real fun if you're trying to do a global assessment of tropical cyclones and trying to estimate them all the same way.

Well, we don't.

Depending on what basin you're in, it's one minute, two minute, three minute, or 10 minute.

So for the North Atlantic, that's June 1st to November 30th.

That said, in the North Atlantic, the peak of the season when you're most likely to see at least one storm active tends to be in the August to October timeframe.

Like right now?

So even though the season officially begins June 1st, not seeing a lot of activity in June and even July is on average normal.

Is anything about this year normal?

No.

But, you know, that's when we tend to see tropical cyclones because that's when seed disturbances like what I talked about coming off of Africa tend to be emerging and thus offering the opportunity to become a tropical cyclone.

Because a tropical cyclone doesn't just pop out of thin air.

Something needs to be there to kind of galvanize it.

But when it comes to looking at the upcoming season, we watch for things like what is the activity over Africa, like how many seed disturbances are coming over the ocean?

Are the waters warm or warmer than normal?

So there's some pretty complicated physics at play and two main contributors to the fact that an eye is present in the first place.

So a storm needs to be a certain strength.