Hurricane Season - 2024

The 2024 hurricane season will be remembered for a long time for its intensity and the destruction it left behind. The Atlantic Hurricane season spans from June 1 to November 30 and for 2024 it had 18 named storms, of which 11 turned into hurricanes and five of those were classified as major (category 3 or stronger). The first tropical cyclone of the season was Tropical Storm Alberto that developed on June 19 followed by Beryl which broke the record for the earliest Category 5 Atlantic hurricane recorded. After Tropical Storm Chris most of July was calm in the Atlantic, the next named storm came in August with Hurricane Debby which made landfall in Florida. Hurricane Ernesto formed on August 12 and although it didn’t come close to continental US, still managed to take the lives of 3 people due to rip currents. August and early September were unusually calm in the Atlantic basin until Hurricane Francine formed on September 9. After Francine the activity in the basin grew considerably. One of these hurricanes was Helene, which became the deadliest hurricane to strike the mainland US since Katrina.

Hurricane Kirk formed later in the season and reached Category 4 before converting into a windstorm and making landfall in Europe. The second Category 5 hurricane of the season, Hurricane Milton, formed on October 5 and made landfall in Florida as a Category 3. The end of the season was active with several named storms and hurricanes such as Nadie, Oscar, and Rafael. The season closed with Tropical Storm Sara making landfall in Belize.

To highlight the dynamics between the ocean and the atmosphere in the development and growth of hurricanes,sea surface temperature is shown as the background for this animation. It allows you to see the changes in the ocean during the season and in some occasions the change after a hurricane passes by. Ernesto is a clear example of this change.

The tracks, category, and windspeed of tropical cyclones to highlight storm characteristics as they move across the basin are also added.

Frames for sea surface temperature and clouds were processed and provided by Rick Kohrs from University of Wisconsin Madison. They were animated using the open source video editing software ShotCut. Hurricane data was obtained from the IBestTracks database and then cleaned for the specific basin. This data was used in a Python script to create the tracks, hurricane labels, and animations for each storm at the same timestamps as the satellite images. Finally all these sections were again combined using Shotcut for the final video.

• Time frame: June 1, 2024 - November 30, 2024
• Frequency: 3 hours per frame
• Variable:
  • Sea Surface Temperature
  • Water Vapor
  • Atlantic Named Storms Location and Wind speed