Another dangerous hurricane season is about to begin

Earlier today, NOAA issued the most ominous pre-season hurricane forecast in its history. Experts now say 2024 will feature about double the number of strong hurricanes as a typical season.

I know how this feels to those of you who have friends or family in harms way — “oh man, not again.”

This is what the climate emergency feels like. Fear. Anxiety. Anger. Repeated, cyclical trauma. Hurricanes are stronger than ever before because some rich men in fancy offices decided that they wanted to make more money than their friends off of selling fossil fuels. It really is that simple.

It doesn’t have to be like this. My dream is that we can — together — build a world where extreme weather doesn’t bring fear, but hope and possibility. That’s because, someday soon, we’ll be resilient enough as communities to know how to help our neighbors in the way that make us all safer. We will build that kind of a world because we must.

That’s why I created Currently — as a community for people who want to stay informed about weather and climate in a justice-forward, solutions-focused way. Currently’s main text message line is and always will be free. That’s right, you can ask your weather question to a real, live meteorologist for free. This service is provided as a public benefit because we want to broaden access to life-saving information in an accessible way. If you have a friends or family who live on the coast or know of an organization who could use this service, take a second now to forward this email to them.

To support our efforts we need your help. My sincere thank you to those of you who are already supporting our efforts with a paid membership. We need a few dozen more sustaining members during the month of May to launch at full strength in all 25 cities on June 1. And right now we’re falling short of that goal.

Temperatures in the areas of the Atlantic where hurricanes form most often are already as warm as a typical August. It’s time to say it loud and clear: climate change has made hurricane season worse. And we can join together to provide information services that value climate justice.

A trend that climate scientists warned about decades ago is proving prescient: It’s not so much that there will be more hurricanes in a warmer world, but the ones that do form will be much stronger and more dangerous. Due in part to all this unusually hot water, rapid intensification of storms has been happening three times faster as storms approach the coast.

Over the past few years, there have been several examples of storms that rapidly strengthened from mere tropical storms to Category 4 or 5 in a day or so, like last year’s Hurricane Idalia in Florida or Hurricane Maria’s devastating landfall in Puerto Rico in 2017. How terrifying to go to bed and wake up with one of the strongest hurricanes in history heading right towards your family.

When you become a sustaining member of Currently at our annual rate — which is 20% off during the month of May — you’ll instantly receive hundreds of dollars of benefits to electrify your life and support your local green economy. And you’ll provide a lifeline to folks who need it.

That’s it for now. Become a Currently sustaining member. Help us build a world worth fighting for.

May you have good weather,

Eric