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The Atlantic hurricane season is getting ready for an early start, with the National Hurricane Center naming the first tropical storm of the year, Tropical Storm Ana.
Houston City Council member Abbie Kamin took to social media to share her own response to the news.
“And so it begins,” Kamin said in a tweet.
While the wave that would later be dubbed Tropical Storm Ana did indeed come to fruition as KHOU’s Chita Craft had warned, Ana eventually moved back out to sea northeast of Bermuda, USA Today reported. Still, the early-developing storm offered some caution of the impending hurricane season.
Federal government forecasters have estimated that the coming hurricane season could produce between 13 and 20 name-worthy storms, USA Today reported. Of those, between six and ten are expected to become hurricanes.
Ana’s development makes this the seventh year in a row that there has been a named storm in the Atlantic prior to the June 1 date for the official start of hurricane season, according to Weather.com. The span of the season – from June 1 through November 30 – is intended by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Hurricane Research Division to cover the time period when approximately 97% of storms will develop.
While the National Hurricane Center hasn’t adjusted the official start of the season to accommodate the trend in early storms, they did start issuing routine Atlantic tropical weather outlooks on May 15, Weather.com reported.
Last season had a record number 30 named storms and 14 hurricanes, USA Today reported. It was the worst season since 2005, which included Katrina and Rita among its 15 hurricanes.