The 2021 Atlantic hurricane season is now underway. It starts today, June 1st, and lasts for six months.
CBS News Correspondent Jim Krasula expects another busy season. He says it's a rather ominous, dire prediction from the National Hurricane Center.
Krasula explains that they are predicting "an above normal number of storms this year, above average. About a 60 percent chance of that happening, according to the Hurricane Center's prediction."
Krasula said there could be 13-20 named storms, up to 10 of which could become hurricanes and up to five of the hurricanes could be major - Category 3 or above.
There was already one named tropical storm in the Atlantic, Ana, which marks the seventh year in a row that there was a named storm prior to the official start of hurricane season.
So how big does a storm have to be in order to be named? Krasula says it has to have sustained winds of at least 39 miles per hour and at that point it becomes a named tropical storm and once a storm gets above about 75 mph winds, it becomes a hurricane.
Krasula tells NewsRadio KDKA that one of the predictors of a busy season is sand.
"One of the things they've noticed so far this year, the last two or three months, is there's not as much sand in the atmosphere from the Sahara [Desert] which would tend to limit the development of these hurricanes," said Krasula.
There's also been more storm activity detected across West Africa according to Krasula, where the storms begin on land before heading out into the Atlantic Ocean.
