Atlantic could have first hurricane of season this week. Here’s what scientists say is coming.

The storm was named Monday afternoon and is expected to strengthen to a hurricane before moving over the Lesser Antilles on Thursday and Friday, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

Its track is less certain than usual forecasts, the NHC notes, though it’s expected to continue moving west over the next few days. It’s too early to tell if it will impact the U.S. coast, LSU climate scientist Jill Trepanier said Monday, “but models suggest it will recurve to the north as it approaches the Lesser Antilles.”

Bret becomes one of only a handful of named storms to form in the Atlantic’s Main Development Region in June. This activity in the eastern Atlantic is “what we would typically see in another 2-3 months,” wrote University of Miami senior research associate Brian McNoldy.

Forecasters are also monitoring another wave off the coast of Africa that has a 50% chance of developing into a tropical cyclone in the next week, according to the NHC.

‘Always be ready’

This hurricane season is a struggle between counteracting forces, and most forecasters predict that struggle will result in an around-average season.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted last month this Atlantic hurricane season will be “near-normal” and less active than recent years.

This is how NOAA’s prediction breaks down: a 40% chance of a near-normal season, a 30% chance for an above-average season and a 30% chance for a below-average season.

This includes a forecast of 12 to 17 named storms, with winds of 39 miles per hour or higher, and five to nine hurricanes, with winds of 74 miles per hour or higher. Notably, just because a storm forms doesn’t mean it will make landfall.

Scientists at Colorado State University have also put out a forecast predicting a near-normal season for the Atlantic.

There are a number of factors that contribute to these predictions, but at the center is a clash between conditions that are favorable and unfavorable for storm formation.

El Niño, the climate phase that warms waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, has developed as NOAA scientists predicted in their forecast. This results in stronger vertical wind shear in the Atlantic that slashes storms and makes it harder for hurricanes to develop.

But this is combined with abnormally high sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic, which encourages storm formation.

“You put the two together, and you end up with something close to average” for the season, said Barry Keim, Louisiana’s state climatologist.

Scientists are predicting an average amount of storms for the Atlantic Basin, which includes the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, but they can’t predict where those storms will go, Keim said.

“What this means to Louisiana, I just shrug my shoulders and say, well, all we can really say as scientists is that we have an average chance of getting hit by a hurricane,” Keim said. “…You never know until the season really gets going.”

Predictions for a near-normal season, in other words, don’t do much to assuage hurricane anxieties for southern Louisianans.

“In the Gulf of Mexico, we always have the chance of getting a bad storm, no matter the year, no matter the other constraints,” Trepanier, who studies extreme weather, said. “Because in the peak of the season, from August, September and October, the Gulf of Mexico is so hot that…a storm can be created just in that warm environment and turn into a really bad storm.”

Though Louisiana isn’t off the hook for this storm season, Trepanier said she doesn’t expect a repeat of 2020, where many factors aligned to create a batch of bad storms.

“Most of those puzzle pieces are in the wrong spots this upcoming season, they are in the spots that won’t make us have lots of storms,” she said. “But the ones that will make the storms worse — like higher ocean temperatures, that proximity to the coast and having really warm ocean waters really close to the coast – those are the kinds of things that can still bring about that devastation. So always be ready.”

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