Colorado State University Researchers Predict Strong Hurricane Season

Colorado is no stranger to some strong and strange weather events. 

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In fact, the town of Paonia, Colorado on the Western Slope has the most unpredictable weather in the United States. On average, the forecast here is off by 5.9 degrees every single day.

Now, a major heatwave is expected to strike Colorado, bringing in dangerous temperatures that could particularly negatively affect those without air conditioning. 

We even have the county with the most tornadoes in the entire country.

However, one type of natural disaster that does not hit us is hurricanes.

Despite this, Colorado State University researchers have been hard at work analyzing this year’s Atlantic hurricane season, and have found some shocking results.

CSU Researches Predict Extremely Active 2024 Hurricane Season

With the recent Hurricane Beryl, which was an extremely strong Category 5, CSU’s Tropical Weather & Climate Research center has predicted an unbelievably active hurricane season.

This is due in large part from a mixture of the record high water temperatures in the ocean along with La Niña.

In particular, there are some truly shocking predictions that blow past averages out of the water.

Between 1991 and 2020, there was an average of 14.4 named storms in a hurricane season. This year, CSU researchers are estimating there will be 25 named storms.

They also predict there will be 120 days with named storms, which is much higher than the 1991 to 2020 average of 69.4. 

Finally, they predict there will be 12 hurricanes with 6 of them being considered major, which is above the average of 7.2 hurricanes and 3.2 major hurricanes.

Can Hurricanes Reach Colorado?

No, hurricanes and tropical storms cannot reach Colorado.

The main reason is that we are just too far inland for that to be possible.

Direct Energy notes that the maximum distance a hurricane can travel inland is 100 to 200 miles. With Colorado being over 1,000 miles away from the Gulf of Mexico, where hurricanes frequently go through, it’s essentially impossible to happen.

Hurricanes need to draw heat from the ocean to continue to keep their form, so when they reach land, it will quickly go down to a tropical storm or depression.