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Season ACE building week by week

Compiled daily

Signature storm track

The season’s strongest storm rendered large — hurricane tracks have the narrative shape of the season.

Annual accumulated cyclone energy since 1950 — taller bars = more total storm energy in that year.

Each bar is one Atlantic season (1851–today). Redder = higher ACE — scan the recent decades for the cluster of energetic years.

Sorted by ACE contribution — each tile is one named storm’s best track on a fixed Atlantic map.

Storms aren’t clearly more frequent in the long record — but recent decades pack more major-hurricane energy.

1851–1950

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1950–2025

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Seasonal outlook

Source	Named	Hurricanes	Major	Updated

Ocean heat →Warm upper-ocean water is the fuel for rapid intensification.
Marine heatwaves →Regional hot pools can precondition storm corridors.
ENSO state →El Niño often increases Atlantic wind shear; La Niña often lowers it.

Coastal flood risk →Storm surge rides on top of higher baseline sea level.
Crop and drought stress →Landfall rains can break droughts or flood fields in days.

Source: NOAA National Hurricane Center HURDAT2 best-track archive (Atlantic since 1851).
Update cadence: We download the latest HURDAT2 file daily; numbers change when NHC posts a revised archive (typically after post-season reanalysis).
Time coverage: Full annual ACE stripes from 1851; annotated bar chart from 1950; storm tiles for the most recent completed season in the file.
Methods: ACE = sum of (wind² ÷ 10,000) at 6-hourly synoptic times when sustained wind ≥ 34 kt and status is tropical/subtropical — not live NHC advisories.
Uncertainty: Early 20th-century tracks and intensities are less certain; modern satellite-era seasons are more reliable. “Near you” uses coarse IP geolocation (ipapi.co).
Limitations: Seasonal outlook table is hand-maintained from public outlook PDFs. Evacuation decisions belong to local officials — see NHC during active storms.
Primary data: HURDAT2 · How this page is built