NOAA Predicts Above-Average Hurricane Season: What It Means For CT

CONNECTICUT — Connecticut and the rest of the Atlantic states are in for another above-normal hurricane season, according to the latest predictions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Hurricane season starts June 1 and lasts through Nov. 30; 2022 marks the seventh consecutive year NOAA has predicted an above-normal season.

NOAA predicts with 70 percent confidence that there will be 14 to 21 named storms, of which six to 10 could become hurricanes. Three to six of the hurricanes will likely be category 3 or above. The predictions are for overall season activity and not for landfall forecast.

The increased activity is due to a number of climate factors, including ongoing La Niña and warmer-than-average seas surface temperatures.

“As we reflect on another potentially busy hurricane season, past storms — such as Superstorm Sandy, which devastated the New York metro area ten years ago — remind us that the impact of one storm can be felt for years,” said NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, Ph.D.

New England landfall hurricanes are rare, but even non-hurricane named storms can wreak havoc on the state’s power grid and cause millions of dollars in damages to residences and businesses.

Most recently, Tropical Storm Isaias knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of electric customers across the state in 2020 amid the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some customer were without power for a week or more.

Legislators, spurned by frustration with electric utility response to the storm, passed a series of reforms. An investigation found that Eversource had only predicted half of the actual outages that occurred.

Electric utilities need to credit customers $25 per day when outages last more than 96 consecutive hours. Residential customers can also be compensated with up to $250 for food or medication that expires. The law also raises the limit on penalties for utilities that don’t comply with emergency preparedness.

Superstorm Sandy killed four people in Connecticut and power outages peaked around 620,000 customers. More than $250 million in federal disaster aid was approved for the state and 12,300 residents registered for federal disaster assistance.