https://irrationalfear.substack.com/p/the-great-hurricane-drought-of-2025
Exposing the Gap Between "Supercharged" Predictions and a Hurricane Season That Never Peaked
DR. MATTHEW WIELICKI
I've been monitoring the Colorado State University (CSU) real-time hurricane dashboard for weeks now: tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Realtime/index.php?loc=northatlantic. Scroll down to the storm-by-storm table and the Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) plot; they tell a story that's far from the "supercharged" nightmare we've been sold.
Don't just take my word for it. Pull up the official 2025 storm list, then eye the ACE curve. ACE, accumulated cyclone energy, measures the total strength and duration of storms; it's like a season's energy scorecard. When no named storms form, the energy flatlines. On CSU's graph, you'll see that the stall is clear as day, especially through the peak around September 10th. The data? It's not matching the dire predictions.
Meanwhile, the media machine churns out alarmist headlines (while never mentioning the hurricane drought):
The New York Times insists climate change is making hurricanes worse
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/climate/climate-change-hurricanes.html
France 24 asks if warming is making hurricanes stronger.
https://www.france24.com/en/environment/20250831-is-climate-change-making-hurricanes-stronger?
Grist claims we now know how much warming "supercharged" Hurricane Katrina.
https://grist.org/science/we-now-know-just-how-much-climate-change-supercharged-hurricane-katrina/
I've spent years checking those claims against observations, including "The Hurricane Hoax: What the IPCC Doesn't Want You to Know", "The Myth of Increasing Disasters", and "The Myth of Ever-Escalating Climate Costs in the USA". The gap between rhetoric and records keeps widening.
Want the nitty-gritty? Specific dates, season totals, side-by-side comparisons, why warm oceans didn't spark a busy September, and a straightforward takedown of hurricane attribution studies? Dive in below.
Open CSU's North Atlantic page. The storm table lists every 2025 system with dates, peak winds, pressure, and each storm's contribution to ACE. Right beneath it sits the season's ACE vs. 1991-2020 climatology curve. That single picture is the season's pulse.
https://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Realtime/index.php?loc=northatlantic
Total named storms: 6 (well below the pre-season forecasts of 13-19).
Total ACE: About 39 -- roughly 30-40% of the full-season average (123). By mid-September, we'd expect 75-100 in a typical year.
Key observation: No new storms since Fernand ended on August 28. That's a 19-day drought during the climatological peak, flattening the ACE curve like a stalled engine.
ACE, in plain English
Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) is the season's scoreboard. Every six hours, forecasters square the maximum sustained wind of each named storm and add it to the running total. Long-lived and strong storms add a lot; short, weak storms barely nudge the needle. That's why ACE exposes hype. You can have several named storms and still have a modest season if they're brief. Conversely, two long-track majors can dominate the total. In 2025, once the names stopped appearing, the scoreboard went flat.
Why warm water wasn't enough
"Warm water fuels hurricanes." It's a soundbite staple, but it's only half the truth. The upper atmosphere calls the shots. Here's why the tropical Atlantic's heat (0.5-1°C above average) didn't ignite a storm frenzy:
Strong wind shear: Winds shifting with height ripped apart budding systems. Shear topped 20 knots in the prime areas of formation.
Dry air invasions: Dust from the Sahara and dry subtropical air starved storms of moisture, killing convection (the rising air that builds thunderstorms).
Tropical Upper-Tropospheric Trough (TUTT): This high-altitude "storm killer" -- a strip of low pressure and cool air 5-10 miles up -- lingered, forcing sinking air and extra shear over the tropics.
These hurdles trumped the ocean warmth, turning September into a ghost town for storms.
Frequency vs. intensity vs. rainfall, stop mixing metrics
Much of the confusion is deliberate. Media pieces slide between how many storms form, how intense the strongest get, and how much rain they drop. The assessment literature is more cautious than the headlines: the long-term global trend in the number of tropical cyclones is weak or non-existent; there is higher confidence that the share of stronger storms and rainfall rates in storms can increase in a warmer climate. Those are different claims.
A sharper look at attribution, and why I'm skeptical
Event attribution tries to answer: "How would this storm play out without human warming?" It's model-heavy and assumption-laden. I've critiqued it extensively, and here's why I'm wary -- backed by science, not spin:
Counterfactual flaws: Results hinge on tweaks to aerosols, oceans, or shear. Alter one, flip the outcome. Many studies hold variables static, risking bias.
False precision in noise: Hurricanes are chaotic; tiny track shifts change winds more than a "climate boost" of 5-10%. Data revisions (upgrades/downgrades post-season) add uncertainty.
Overlooking 3D dynamics: Warming tweaks the whole atmosphere, but studies often isolate temperature. This can bake in positive signals artificially.
No real predictions: These are after-the-fact explanations, not forecasts. True test? Predict the "extra mph" before a storm hits.
Hazard vs. harm: A modeled rain bump in Katrina doesn't explain the catastrophe -- levee breaks, population growth, and poor planning did. Losses normalize flat when adjusted for exposure.
Attribution studies overpromise, fueling headlines that erode trust when seasons like 2025 underperform.
What the quiet tells us, and what it doesn't
A flat ACE through peak hurricane season doesn't debunk the climate's role in hurricanes. But it demolishes the oversold tale: "Warm world = nonstop monster storms, every year." Climate is about long-term stats, and 2025 exposes the folly of one-variable hype.
This gap matters. It erodes public faith in science when predictions flop and headlines scream anyway. It fuels wasteful policies chasing phantom threats while ignoring real resilience needs, like better infrastructure.
The lesson? Always verify against data, not dogma. Seasons like this remind us: Nature doesn't follow scripts. If we want credible climate discourse, let's demand narratives that match the records.
I've been monitoring the Colorado State University (CSU) real-time hurricane dashboard for weeks now: tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Realtime/index.php?loc=northatlantic. Scroll down to the storm-by-storm table and the Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) plot; they tell a story that's far from the "supercharged" nightmare we've been sold.