Saturday marks the beginning of the 2024 hurricane season, and a forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests it could be the most active one we’ve ever seen. Rick Spinrad, the agency’s administrator, said in a news conference last month that the “forecast for named storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes is the highest NOAA has ever issued for the May outlook.” The prediction is that there will be 17 to 25 named storms, eight to 13 of them hurricanes.
For many Americans, the time spanning Memorial Day and the beginning of June is marked by the happy anticipation of summer fun. But for those who call some part of the country’s hurricane region home, it can be the beginning of six full months of dread.
For many Americans, the time spanning Memorial Day and the beginning of June is marked by the happy anticipation of summer fun. But for those who call some part of the country’s hurricane region home, it can be the beginning of six full months of dread. Will the big one (or more than one big one) hit us this year? Will we have enough lead time to flee? If we have enough advance warning, will we have enough money to make a trip? Will there be vacancies at hotels? Will they take our pets? How long will the power be out? Will all our food be lost? Will our house be destroyed? Will insurance pay my claims? And even if it does, will it drop me after paying out?
If none of the above happens (and even if every single bit of it does) the sense of foreboding returns the next June. I compare living in hurricane territory in this time of distressing climate change to what it felt like the year between my mom telling me her cancer was incurable and the family being summoned to the hospital that last time: Will this be the day that brings the news that what we fear most is on the radar?
For those grasping for a phrase to describe the feeling, ecoanxiety, climate anxiety, hurricane anxiety and anticipatory anxiety are all in use. The first of those was reportedly coined by the American Psychological Association and ecoAmerica in 2017 and defined as “a chronic fear of environmental doom.”
Meteorologists and the computers they use have become a lot better at tracking where a named storm might land. But as they’ve gotten better at that pursuit, the trend of storms rapidly exploding in strength because of warm ocean water has made it difficult to predict how hard a particular storm will hit. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey’s winds intensified by 40 mph in the 24 hours before landfall in Texas. In 2018, Hurricane Michael’s winds strengthened by 45 mph in the 24 hours before it hit Florida, and Hurricane Laura’s winds increased by the same amount before it hit Louisiana in 2020. Those were bad enough. But in October, Otis, a tropical storm, grew 115 mph in strength in 24 hours and slammed into Acapulco, Mexico, as a Category 5 hurricane that killed at least 52 people.
Almost nobody in hurricane territory is going to evacuate for a mere tropical storm. If you were going to leave at the approach of every tropical storm, then it would be better to permanently move elsewhere. But if a Tuesday tropical storm can be a Wednesday Category 5 hurricane, then what exactly are people to do? The New Orleans area got as many people out of town as it did before Hurricane Katrina by employing “contraflow,” which uses every lane of the interstate to carry traffic out of town. But Cynthia Lee Sheng, leader of Jefferson Parish, the city’s largest suburb, said in a May news conference, “I just don’t see how contraflow can happen again.” She said, “We need 72 hours for contraflow. It’s just not even an option for us with rapidly intensifying storms.”
A study last year found that tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Ocean were about 29% more likely to undergo rapid intensification from 2001 to 2020, compared to 1971 to 1990.
And this year, the water’s already hot. Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami, told NBC News last month that the Caribbean’s temperatures were already higher than the typical year’s peak temperatures, and May temperatures in the east Atlantic were as high as those found in August. We’ve also entered La Niña, a climate pattern associated with more Atlantic hurricanes.
“We’ve never had a La Niña with ocean temperatures this warm in the Atlantic before. There’s not a historical year to look back to,” McNoldy said. “We’re certainly in uncharted territory. As someone who lives on a fairly hurricane-prone part of the coastline, I’m not too excited about it.”
Last month, as the Louisiana Illuminator reported, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, signed into law a bill that gives insurance companies “new freedoms to raise rates on customers, cancel policies and walk away with lighter legal penalties when they refuse to pay claims.” Florida’s insurance market is reportedly in a “much stronger place” than it was last year but could be weakened by a major hurricane. Things that would help mitigate climate change — fewer polluting industries, more electric vehicles, green energy — are anathema to Republicans, who run most of the country’s hurricane territory. So the hopes of things getting better — even gradually so — seem small. In a 2021 episode of the “Speaking of Psychology” podcast, Thomas J. Doherty, a past president of the Society for Environmental, Population and Conservation Psychology, said a term he uses is “climate hostage.” “We feel like we’re kind of hostages to this larger process,” he said. “And it is true, because your average citizen doesn’t have a lot of power to direct the government or corporations to address climate. So we do feel hostage to this.” The feeling that Doherty describes is felt by so many people the world over, not just people in the U.S. and not just people in this country who live where hurricanes can land. But those of us here have a particular day on the calendar when that feeling of powerlessness kicks in, a day that marks the beginning of an entire half year of unease.
Jarvis DeBerry is an opinion editor for MS NOW Daily. He was previously editor-in-chief at the Louisiana Illuminator and a columnist and deputy opinion editor at The Times-Picayune. 
