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Monday, June 1, marks the “official” start of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season and forecasters expect a hyperactive one, as a third storm has a 70% chance of developing this week, while states are already battling coronavirus and rioters. And soon, it will also be wildfire season in the West as well.
The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 through November 30, but started early this year, when Tropical Storm Arthur formed on May 16 off of the coast of Florida. A second storm, Tropical Storm Bertha, also formed ahead of schedule on May 27 off of the coast of South Carolina.
A number of top meteorological forecasters have all foreseen a hyperactive Atlantic hurricane season for 2020. Weather experts are predicting between 13-19 named storms to form. Out of these, they expect 6 to 10 hurricanes, with most putting the number around 8. They expect between 3 to 6 to become major hurricanes, defined by winds of 111 mph.
An area of disturbed weather, which briefly was tropical storm Amanda in the eastern Pacific, is now moving into the Gulf, and forecasters give it a 70 percent chance of developing into a named storm in the next five days. If it does, it will become the third storm of the season, Tropical Storm Cristobal.
As the Atlantic hurricane season officially gets underway on Monday, and with another potential storm looming in the Gulf of Mexico, states could soon see themselves doing battle on three different fronts.
This week, protests over the death of a black man at the hands of police in Minneapolis have turned violent, forcing at least 30 major cities to enact curfews and many having to recruit assistance from the National Guard to try and restore order.
Amid this, states are still dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.
Now, a third battlefront could emerge if tropical storms or hurricanes create new disasters that could overwhelm first responders and states that are already spread thin dealing with protests.
As states were still enforcing physical distancing and lockdowns, protests and riots brought people together in mobs, overriding the precautions that were in place. Many states are bracing to see an uptick in new coronavirus cases as social distancing has been ignored.
Even before the protests, lawsuits were piling up over the coronavirus pandemic, as some people sought after a nursing home abuse lawyer. With hundreds of thousands of young people gathering for protests across the nation, and it is largely young people that staff many nursing homes, there is fear that a new outbreak of coronavirus will again be spread to elderly people in these facilities.
Obviously, if a hurricane strikes, state emergency managers will be forced to pivot from stay-at-home orders to instructing people to leave their homes.
Disaster plans are being rewritten by officials across the nation to be prepared for large groups of evacuees that meaning to be sheltered. The main focus of the plans is on how to create social distancing within shelters.
The state focusing on this issue the most is also the state that usually sees the brunt of storms during hurricane season – Florida.
Wildfire season is rapidly approaching in the West and firefighters are already working social distancing into their strategy, should long-duration wildfires occur.
