The World Meteorological Organization meets every year to discuss the previous year's hurricane season, going over what we've learned, what we should change, and what hurricane names may be retired from the hurricane lists.
This year, the WMO will meet in Mid-March, and a newly announced agenda item will be the focus for seasons to come. That's because they're reviewing proposed changes in starting the 2021 Atlantic Hurricane Season to May 15, 2021 - about two weeks earlier than the normal June 1st start date.
CBS 12 News has obtained an Agenda Item from the upcoming WMO meeting in March that has the list of proposed changes to the Hurricane Operational Plan. The changes state...
NHC will begin issuing routine Atlantic basin TWOs on 15 May in 2021...NOAA/RSMC Miami will determine a quantitative threshold for adding or removing dates from the official Atlantic hurricane season. A team within NOAA/RSMC Miami will then examine the need for any downstream ramifications of potentially moving the beginning of the Atlantic hurricane season to 15 May. Present the findings at a future RA IV Hurricane Committee meeting and gather feedback on the possibility of changing dates of the Atlantic hurricane season.
The changes were submitted by the Regional Specialized Meteorological Center Miami (RSMC Miami), which oversees the tropical weather outlooks for the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific basin. The reason this proposed action has been made is due to the history of our past nine hurricane seasons. Out of the last 9 seasons, seven tropical storms have formed between May 15th and the current official start date of June 1st.
Photo: Getty Images