Jim’s 2025 hurricane season land impact predictions
Hurricane season begins June 1st and it is expected to be another busy season but really all that matters is where they could hit.
I am calling for 18 to 20 named storms in which 12 will be hurricanes and 4 of those will be major 115mph plus. In some years I may factor in strength of systems I think could impact my top 20 but not this year. Too many of my analogs and trends showed tropical storm strength but we all know somewhere will be hit by a hurricane as well as by a major hurricane.
I start out with the 139 cities and islands in the hurricanecity.com database www.hurricanecity.com/cities.htm . In order for a city to be included for consideration to crack the top 20 it has to match at least 1 of the criteria listed below.
I got the list down to 94 locations where at least 1 criteria was met. The second phase was removing locations that had weak criteria such as only 1 or 2 analog years being met or areas with no trends or not being due or overdue. Now my list was down to 60 or nearly half of the database. I put a lot of weight in trends so if a city or island had a weak trend in combination with only 1 or 2 analog years they would be removed. This got the list down to 40 locations , which is where the real number crunching comes into play. The 40 chosen locations need to have at least 3 or more criteria from the list above to make the top 20. At this point it is basically choosing the strongest criteria especially trends which make you go “wow” getting the list down to 20. The chart below list’s the cities in alphabetical order and whoever wins the most criteria “yellow” is higher ranked.
One could argue looking at this chart the order of the top 20 as #1 Norfolk, Virginia won only 3 of the criteria. Had there been a location with 4 yellow area “winners” of each criteria they would have been #1. It came down to Norfolk matching 5 of my analog years, being statistically due and being impacted 16 times during Neutral ENSO seasons since 1950 being the determining factor. The map below shows the 20 chosen areas to be impacted by 40+mph winds by tropical systems during the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season.
Grouping of locations allow for a circle indicating high risk as seen in the western Bahamas. Next would be the Mid Atlantic states followed by East central Gulf as more of a moderate risk. It would involve a lot of reading/scrolling to explain why other areas like Texas, South Carolina, Mexico, Jamaica and the Lesser Antilles did not make the top 20. I did make a video explaining partially why these areas were not chosen. This next map is my best guess at potential tracks based on the top 20.
By narrowing down predictions based on city by city and islands separately allow for exact number crunching. For example the statistics between Miami and Fort Lauderdale are slightly different . Each location has a gap distance of at least 50 miles some are a bit closer but allows for the statistics to be used for predictions. The red dots indicate all areas in the database and these tracks represent the swath of hurricane force winds I think could happen this season.
As I say every season every coastal area needs to be prepared regardless of threat potential seen here. Just about every season an area or areas get hit that are not on my list.
https://www.noaa.gov/hurricane-prep
As the season progresses you can watch as each city gets highlighted in yellow for being impacted by 40+mph.
Please visit www.hurricanecity.com/predictions.htm
I always look forward to feedback jim@hurricanecity.com I wish everyone a safe hurricane season.