CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Heading into the peak of Atlantic basin hurricane season, AccuWeather is reducing the number of named storms its forecasting. In March, AccuWeather had predicted 11-16 named storms for the upcoming season, but has now dialed that back to 8-11.

AccuWeather predicts 3-5 storms will impact the U.S., and 1-2 storms will become major hurricanes. The peak of the season hits Sept. 10.

Warmer seawater temperatures overall are what’s driving what has so far been a lack of Atlantic basin action, AccuWeather lead hurricane forecaster Alex DeSilva told Cville Right Now.

“The main two drivers that can usually dictate the hurricane season, at least we can look at months in advance, are predicting sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic, whether they’re above average or below average,” DeSilva told Cville Right Now. “And the other big driver is either El Nino or La Nina which is way out in the Pacific southeast of Hawaii and right along the equator, and when we see those waters warmer than average that’s El Nino.”

What we have now, DeSilva said, is the Atlantic very warm and the Pacific in a strengthening El Nino situation.

The El Nino situation made it favorable for Hurricane LaLa to form that caused havoc when it hit Hawaii this month, and now another system is threatening that state again, DeSilva said.

“What El Nino does in the Atlantic, though, is cause a lot of hostile winds, what we call wind shear in the Atlantic basin,” DeSilva said. “These are changes in wind direction and speed as you go up into the atmosphere and they really disrupt tropical development.

“Thunderstorms, they like to grow straight up into the atmosphere, but when you have a lot of this wind shear it disrupts those thunderstorms.”

That condition has been fortunate for the Atlantic basin because, according to DeSilva, there is ongoing development of historically warm Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea waters.

“We were about fourth or so all-time way back in March in terms of those water temperatures,” DeSilva said. “It looked like it would be a top-ten, if not a top-five, year. We fast forward to now, and for this date in August we are second all-time if you average out the entire Atlantic basin, only following 2023.”

Even though the Atlantic waters are that warm, there’s only been Arther and Bertha that impacted the Gulf coast and waves that have drifted off Africa into the Atlantic have not had favorable conditions for development.

“The reason we’re not seeing the Atlantic exploding with activity is because while we do have those really warm waters, we do have the really strong El Nino right now that’s causing those really destructive winds,” said DeSilva.

In fact, the El Nino is currently top-five of all-time, and DeSilva said, “We’re going to be in the top-three before too long, and we have the chance here by the end of the hurricane season to be seeing the strongest El Nino we have on record.”

While that’s good enough to reduce the total number of named storms, the concern is with as warm as the waters are that anything that does develop can grow very quickly.

“If a storm is able to find a pocket of lower hostile winds, you know the really warm water could allow the storm to rapidly intensify,” he said.

As for where those pockets can be, DeSilva said AccuWeather in March was most concerned with the northern and northeastern Gulf Coast, as well as the Carolinas as areas with an increased chance of impact this season.

“Two of the three total storms that we’ve seen this year have impacted the area we were most concerned about,” DeSilva said. “And the reason why we picked those areas out is because typically in El Nino, that’s the general patterns that would support impacts in those areas that we’ve seen in previous El Nino years.

“For you guys in Charlottesville, you don’t need a storm to necessarily hit the Carolinas or Coastal Virginia to bring impacts to you, as we’ve seen plenty of storms that have made landfall in Louisiana, western Florida that have still went north. And while the wind is really not an issue, the flooding rain can be an issue.”

That was the case with Hurricane Camille in 1969, which was commemorated in Nelson County on Aug. 15, as well as Helene which brought record flooding to portions of Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia in 2024.

“Even though we just lowered our numbers, it just takes one storm to cause significant damage,” DeSilva said.

He said residents still need to keep watching the tropics and be prepared if activity strikes.