What Happens To Hurricane Forecasters During The Offseason?
What Happens To Hurricane Forecasters During The Offseason?
Jonathan Belles Fri, February 27, 2026 at 9:32 PM UTC
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When the Atlantic hurricane season officially ends each year on Nov. 30, an entirely different kind of storm begins.
"I would argue sometimes we're busier in the offseason than we are during operations," said Philippe Papin, a senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami.
The months that follow are when experts dissect the previous season in painstaking detail, test new tools, refine models and train others around the world, preparing for whatever the atmosphere throws at them next.
What Dec. 1 Brings
For many forecasters, there is a change in schedule. Instead of forecast shifts, demands during the offseason force scientists to be more versatile with a variety of tasks and a more standard schedule.
The first major task that some of the staff at the NHC undertake is compiling the tropical cyclone reports for the season. These reports list the meteorological history, the environmental factors that affected a storm, critiques on its forecast and communication of its threats, a damage assessment, a computer model evaluation and tons of data like winds and rainfall from anywhere storms made landfall.
NOAA/NHC
“Depending on how impactful the storm was, [the reports] can either take a few weeks” or, according to Papin, “all the way up to four or five months for some of the very big very impactful tropical cyclones.”
Spring, then, offers an international conversation about the previous hurricane season and how it will impact seasons going forward. The U.S. is a part of Region IV of the World Meteorological Organization, which covers countries from across North America and the Caribbean.
Each country submits a report on impacts from the season and any requests for retirement for storm names. If a country requests that a name is never used again, a committee makes a decision about whether that name will be retired and what the replacement name would be.
(MORE: Hurricane Season Terms You Should Know
There's also a key geographic shift in focus during the cooler months. Experts move their focus from the Gulf and East Coasts to the Pacific as the two squadrons of the Hurricane Hunters are often diverted to research on atmospheric rivers and wintertime extratropical storms off the U.S. West Coast and abroad.
We sat down with the Maj. Sarah Olsen, an aerial reconnaissance weather officer with the Air Force Hurricane Hunters, to grasp this big pivot.
“Usually by Dec. 1, we're already into our atmospheric river operations while also trying to wrap up our hurricane season.”
When we chatted, her squadron had teams in Hawaii and California watching atmospheric rivers, with a plan to cover a winter storm, all while keeping teams healthy and alert and keeping up routine aircraft maintenance.
NOAA frequently has a high-altitude Gulfstream IV jet studying the movement of moisture and the impact of atmospheric rivers along the coast. One of NOAA’s Lockheed WP-3D aircraft has been sent to Ireland for the last few winters to calibrate existing satellite sensors and test new ones over the North Atlantic.
Smaller Twin Otter aircraft provide ground imagery to support damage assessments after storms, floodplain mapping and other topographic/bathymetric maps. Those same aircraft also relocated cold-stunned sea turtles from chilly Massachusetts to balmy Florida in late December this year.
Education is one of the most important tasks taken on during the offseason. “I would say as soon as Dec. 1 hits, basically the offseason outreach schedule really cranks into high gear,” Papin said.
“We host workshops,” NHC Warning Coordination meteorologist Robbie Berg said. “We teach emergency managers along the Atlantic coast, along the Gulf Coast, how to use our products, so that they can get their public constituents ready to go before a hurricane hits.”
(MORE: 100 Days Until The 2026 Atlantic Hurricane Season: 3 Things To Know)
As soon as the tropical activity wanes, emails are sent out to begin setting up awareness efforts and week-long courses. The National Hurricane Center also facilitates travel from many international countries to its courses in Miami.
Shortly after is when the NHC and many of its partners hit the road for the Hurricane Awareness Tours in the U.S. and Caribbean.
“One of my most favorite parts of the job is we get to bring the Hurricane Hunter aircraft to different cities along the coast and down in the Caribbean so that the residents in those areas can see what the Hurricane Hunter planes look like, what they do,” Berg said.
This allows scientists to speak directly with the public about what the NHC does and how citizens can better prepare for hurricane hazards.
“We have conversations with people just to get some awareness of what we do, the data that goes out and like where people can find reliable forecast information,” Olsen said. “We will oftentimes go to schools, so we do outreach to kids for them to understand more about severe weather and how to prepare.”
This year, the tours will reach Belize, Mexico, Honduras and the U.S.
“Go” mode comes up for the NHC around early to mid-May because that is when hurricane season starts in the Pacific. This is when the center switches back to shift work, but also answers requests for training and education.
“There really is almost a month or two overlap (from mid-May to mid-June) where we're really trying to juggle a lot of the responsibilities we have,” Berg said.
At The Weather Company, we’re also spending this time to build a stronger foundation of trust.
“My goal is to ensure that when the stakes are high and we enter 'severe mode,' the relationship with our audience is so strong, our voice is the one they rely on to stay safe and make the best decisions for their lives and livelihoods,” Melissa Medori, external communications manager for The Weather Company, said.
This includes nurturing relationships with media partners and customers alike, so they are ready to go when weather strikes.
Learning Lessons
One of the first checkpoints after Atlantic hurricane season ends is a recap of what the season brought and to identify where there is room for improvement.
The Air Force Hurricane Hunters have what Olsen calls a tropical season hot wash to sit down and review all things aerial reconnaissance from the previous season.
“What went well, what went wrong, like what can we do to improve this?” she said.
The Weather Channel
Similar debriefs at the NHC highlighted the need for more support for international communities after Hurricane Melissa slammed Jamaica and Haiti last hurricane season. There are now active discussions around how to better serve those areas and partners across the basin.
Hurricane seasons — quiet and busy alike — continue to emphasize that water is a major killer from hurricanes in the U.S.
“Even though (Tropical Storm Chantal) wasn't a significant wind hazard, that was an unfortunate event where basically you had the storm pivot and turn over North Carolina and produce some very excessive rainfall that led to probably the most damage of any system that has occurred in the United States this year," Papin said. "And because of that, you know, it kind of highlights the fact that it's not just wind hazards that are very impactful and tropical cyclones.”
“But we know that every hazard can be unique," Berg added. “Every hazard can cause problems in different parts of the country, depending on where a storm hits."
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While this has been a theme for numerous recent hurricane seasons, it continues to be something that will be emphasized going forward.
Another lesson that Papin shared that he and his fellow forecasters learned was that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) could improve forecasts. “By the end of the hurricane season, we realized (the Google DeepMind AI model) was one of our better-performing guidance aids.”
There are several more models being investigated during the coming months to see how forecasts can be best improved.
Rapid intensification continues to be something that the NHC is exploring more deeply each year.
We saw the need for that this season, when Hurricane Melissa rapidly intensified from a tropical storm to a 185-mph Category 5 hurricane in the days leading up to its landfall. The NHC considered its forecast for Melissa as a success, but acknowledged there is still room for improvement.
“We are seeing some advances in being able to forecast and pinpoint when rapid intensification might occur, but we're not perfect yet,” Berg said. “And so I think that's one of the big places we're really trying to put a lot of our resources and research is to help with those particular forecasts.”
The Weather ChannelMonitoring The Tropics
Even though tropical storms and hurricanes aren’t supposed to happen during the offseason, the National Hurricane Center always has a designated person working to monitor the Atlantic and Pacific basins. The center will beef up its shifts to constantly monitor a disturbance when it becomes a threat.
In fact, just prior to our interview with Papin, the team of meteorologists was watching a disturbance in the Pacific, and there were meetings to discuss if updates needed to be issued for it.
Just as the NHC does, our team at The Weather Company has a change in shifts and priorities during this time. During "severe mode," “every team mobilizes … through the night, so that every system, data point and alert is firing properly,” Medori said.
It has occasionally been activated by the tropics before hurricane season officially starts on June 1.
Early Forecasts For Hurricane Season
One of the biggest tasks during the offseason is figuring out how the upcoming season will go. I was recently in Florida and the question about how the next hurricane season will go came up at almost every dinner outing.
You’ll likely find some issuing early outlooks already, but Phil Klotzbach notes that outlooks issued by Colorado State University and other groups in March and April start to gain more insight while those earlier than that lack skill. NOAA prefers to wait until May.
Two of the signals that Colorado State University watches this time of the year is El Niño - Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and water temperatures in the Atlantic.
(MORE: What Warming Waters Mean For This Spring, Hurricane Season)
“These conditions are very important for Atlantic hurricane activity,” said Klotzbach, a senior research scientist, meteorologist and author of the popular hurricane season outlooks issued through CSU.
Todd Crawford is especially keen on watching sea surface temperature anomalies and their relationship to tropical activity. He is the mastermind behind our seasonal forecasts here at The Weather Company and Atmospheric G2.
Both factors set the stage for the upcoming season, then other shorter-lived features like bouts of dry air, parades of tropical waves and the Central American Gyre are less-predictable tweaks to that stage that can make periodic lulls and bursts in activity.
After nailing down ENSO and Atlantic water temperatures, Matt Rosencrans, NOAA’s lead hurricane seasonal forecaster, dives deeper. He looks to larger wind patterns like the West African monsoon and newly found signals in the latest research to nail down seasonal forecasts.
The first outlooks for the upcoming hurricane season come out in April. But Klotzbach notes that you should check in with their outlooks throughout the season as things can change before the peak of hurricane season.
Preparing Upgrades For The Upcoming Season
Scientists are actively taking steps to make sure they're ready for the next season.
Hurricane Hunters prepare their fleets. The NOAA Hurricane Hunters anticipate welcoming a high-altitude Gulfstream G550 to their fleet this hurricane season, which would supplement capabilities to do environmental reconnaissance around tropical storms and hurricanes.
Gulfstream/NOAA
NOAA will also leverage uncrewed aircraft in the upcoming season. In 2025, one such aircraft delivered the first-ever video during a record-long 120 minute flight into Hurricane Melissa. The momentum from these advances is expected to continue in the season ahead.
You also might be surprised to learn that the Hurricane Hunters do not currently have broadband on their aircraft. Olsen was hopeful that this won’t be true anymore when the season ahead begins.
“It would allow us to transmit higher resolution data from our dropsondes off the aircraft in real time,” she said.
They’re currently uploading higher resolution data after they land, which can be hours after the data was received in the aircraft. Broadband would also allow for faster communication with the National Hurricane Center.
The offseason also gives a window of opportunity to conduct maintenance on their aircraft. A deeper, extensive scrub of the planes is done off site when the weather allows.
New Hurricane Center products. While this won’t be for this upcoming hurricane season, the NHC is still striving toward giving more notice that a hurricane is on the way. Forecasters have been testing longer range cones of uncertainty for more than five years now and will eventually be able to reliably and accurately forecast hurricanes out to six and seven days.
New visualization tools for the public will soon be available so that we can visualize the threats a hurricane may bring to us. The wind speed probabilities graphic is one product that will get a refresh soon.
Computing upgrades. NOAA puts its computer models, including the American GFS model and specialized hurricane models, through annual computing upgrades to improve forecast accuracy.
“These annual updates allow the models to incorporate the latest advances in science, computing technology and data sources, ensuring they reflect our best understanding of how hurricanes form, strengthen and move,” said Zhan Zhang, hurricane modeling project lead at NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center.
NHC/NOAA
At the same time that the main physics-based models are being upgraded, NOAA is developing new artificial intelligence and machine learning-based prediction systems. This technology learns from historical data to rapidly generate forecasts.
AI versions of the GFS and GFS ensemble model suites were first implemented into operational practice during the current offseason and are expected to be used in the upcoming hurricane season.
“This blend of science, technology, and human judgment provides the most reliable and actionable information,” Zhang said.
Scientists Are Hard At Work
So even while you’re packing away your hurricane supplies and taking a breather from the Atlantic, know that for the true experts, the offseason is just the beginning.
These weeks and months are their laboratory, classroom, strategy session and more, because the calendar will flip back to June before we know it. When that first system appears on satellite, we’ll reap the benefits of months of preparation already in motion.
Jonathan Belles has been a digital meteorologist for weather.com for 9 years. His favorite weather is tropical weather, but also enjoys covering high-impact weather and news stories and winter storms. He's a two-time graduate of Florida State University and a proud graduate of St. Petersburg College.
Thanks to weather.com lead editor Jenn Jordan for her significant contributions to this article and to all our the experts that contributed their thoughts and time.
Source: “AOL Breaking”
