In late May, the quiet before hurricane season officially begins, when grocery stores covertly replenish bottled water shelves and residents begin to eye their roof tarps, a certain kind of dread descends on coastal towns. Along the Gulf Coast, that sentiment has always been present. However, it has a heavier burden this year. NOAA’s data is hard to ignore, and the message is clear: the window of opportunity to prepare is closing more quickly than most people realize, the ocean is getting warmer, and storms are getting stronger.
In the Gulf, hurricanes are nothing new. Flooding isn’t either. However, what climate scientists are currently recording is somewhat of a paradigm shift in the behavior of these storms. Tropical cyclones are powered by warm ocean waters, which have been getting hotter for years. This has a quantifiable impact on storm behavior. A phenomenon known as rapid intensification, in which a storm can transition from a tropical depression to a major hurricane in a matter of hours, is increasingly linked by research to elevated sea surface temperatures. 190 Atlantic tropical cyclones experienced rapid intensification between 1980 and 2025. Of those storms, nearly 25% intensified at rates considered extreme by scientists. It’s not a footnote. There is a pattern there.
Practically speaking, the amount of time that rapid intensification leaves for evacuation is what makes it so unsettling. Communities have days of runway when a slow-moving Category 1 passes through the Gulf in a predictable manner. A storm that experiences an overnight doubling of wind speed does not. People who live along the coast and are used to watching forecasts and making leisurely decisions are discovering that model is subtly failing. In 2024, Hurricane Helene struck the Florida Big Bend region with such force that even seasoned meteorologists watching the data in real time were taken aback. Hurricane Helene first formed in the Gulf.
It’s important to state clearly that rainfall, storm surge, and inland flooding are not taken into consideration by the Saffir-Simpson wind scale, the well-known one through five rating system that most people use to assess a storm’s danger. That has always been a drawback. However, it’s getting riskier. A Category 2 hurricane can destroy an inland community that was never in the projected wind cone, as history has repeatedly demonstrated. The most common cause of hurricane-related fatalities has been water hazards rather than wind. Off the ocean, the surge rolls in. Rivers and drainage systems that were never intended to handle such a volume are filled with rain, sometimes for days after landfall.
Photorealistic storm surge visualizations across 20 Atlantic and Gulf Coast states are now available on Climate Central’s RiskViewer platform. This type of visual aid tends to make abstract numbers seem relatable. Reading a flood probability percentage has a different psychological impact than seeing a rendering of your own street underwater. Even if the storm never materializes, residents who have used it seem to have changed as a result of the experience.
The underlying problem is that the Gulf Coast’s infrastructure, including building codes, levees, drainage systems, and emergency response schedules, was primarily created with historical storm patterns in mind. These trends are changing. Increased moisture from warmer water causes heavier rainfall to push farther inland, flooding areas that have never had a reason to consider themselves hurricane country. Now, towns that are an hour away from the coast are at the wrong end of that presumption.
It has always been advised to get ready before the official start of the Atlantic season on June 1. It feels more like urgency this year than advice. Twenty years ago, the Gulf was a different body of water. Even though the evacuation plans haven’t caught up yet, the storms building above it are aware of this.
