Hurricane Milton isn’t the end of our destructive storm season. There’s likely more to come.

October’s sudden uptick in storms isn’t a surprise to scientists. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted a high chance of a more active season this year than normal in May and reiterated its prediction in August after the season kicked off to a violent start with Hurricanes Beryl, Debby, and Ernesto.

Then hurricane season went quiet. There were no named storms between August 13 and September 3 — typically around when hurricane season is reaching its peak. As Hurricanes Helene and Milton suggest, it was the calm before the storm.

Weather patterns — like Africa’s monsoon season and La Niña — that typically fuel hurricanes during peak season, were behaving unexpectedly over the summer, which likely contributed to the unseasonable lull. Those patterns have since shifted, which could bring more storms in the coming weeks.

Over the summer, Africa’s monsoon season, which feeds the Atlantic with moisture and waves for forming storms, made an unusual move and migrated north to drier conditions where storms are less likely to form, according to a September report from Colorado State University’s Department of Atmospheric Science.

La Niña, the periodic cooling of ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific, typically reduces vertical wind shear in the tropics, which can help Atlantic storms form and grow. This year, La Niña was forecast to begin in August but it’s only just now showing signs of ramping up.

“We’re kind of sliding into La Niña now,” Matthew Rosencrans, the lead hurricane season forecaster with the NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, told BI. The West African monsoon has also settled back toward its typical position, he added. Both are signs that hurricane season is not over and more storms could be on the horizon.

More storms to come

This year’s unusual hurricane season may be a sign of things to come.

In a study published in June, Núñez Ocasio and colleagues simulated how increasing levels of moisture in the atmosphere — a consequence of climate change — may affect Africa’s climate and Atlantic hurricanes in the coming years.

Typically, more moisture can lead to more storms, but the study found a tipping point where too much moisture can cause an abnormally wet and active African monsoon. That shifts the energy north away from the zone where it would normally spark a tropical storm — similar to what happened this year.

“What the study shows is that there’s a delay,” in hurricane formation, Núñez Ocasio said, adding that, “we may start to see a shift in the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season.”

Rosencrans said that there’s a large window for peak hurricane season, and the peak varies each year. This year’s peak appears to be a couple of weeks later than average, but he’s yet to see a trend that would confirm a concrete shift.

“What we have to do is prepare, because in the end, what we do is to save life and property,” Núñez Ocasio said of herself and the hurricane research community.