Hurricane season starts June 1, but 1st named storm could come sooner

Is the 2022 hurricane season going to be off to an early start just like it has over the past seven years? The odds are in favor that. Even though hurricane season officially begins on June 1, we could see our first named storm this month. We already have our eyes on two weak systems, one off the southeast coast and another weak wave off the coast of Africa.

The National Hurricane Center started watching the weak wave off the African coast after convection quickly developed on Mother's Day. On Monday though, convection has steadily decreased and the system is not well organized. I've checked two global models, the European and the American and neither have this forming into a tropical system. We will continue to monitor this system nonetheless.

The second system we are watching is off the North Carolina coast, and it's delivering gale force winds, high surf and coastal flooding to our coast and will be moving over the warm gulf stream waters in the days ahead as it drifts to the southwest. By the end of the week, this system will move inland bringing showers and storms to the southeast and here in North Carolina, so there is only a small window of opportunity for development.

Seeing this potential for tropical development in the month of May is not surprising. Check out the stats over the past seven years.

We have seen early tropical development outside of hurricane season, which starts on June 1, every year since 2015! Alex in 2016 actually developed in January that year, and Arlene developed in April of 2017.

The trend of early developing tropical systems has the National Hurricane Center considering starting hurricane season on May 15 instead of June 1. As of right now they have not come to any decision but tropical updates will begin on the 15.

Stay with WRAL online and on air for any updates to these two systems!