COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Andrew Dessler is a professor at Texas A&M and Director at the Texas Center for Climate Studies. He says experts are predicting an average season because of an emerging El Niño event that will cancel out the extremely hot temperatures of the ocean, but Texans should not solely rely on predicted forecasts.
"Throw the forecast out the window. It doesn't matter what these groups are forecasting, even if they forecast it's not going to be a busy season or it's going to be a really busy season because that doesn't matter," Dessler said. "What matters is that you're prepared if a storm hits you because it only takes one storm to ruin your day."
Dessler says now is the perfect time to start thinking about your plan on where to go, what you will take with you if you have to evacuate, and how you will secure your property if you decide to shelter.
"Do they have members of the family that are not very mobile? Do they have lots of pets? Do they have lots of keepsakes they want to take with them? These are the kinds of things to be thinking about," Dessler said. "You do not want to be thinking about it when you're staring down the barrel of a big hurricane."
While this hurricane season may be fairly normal, the same can't be said about future ones.
Sea levels are rising, and the warmer climate is leading to more water vapor. Dessler thinks coastal residents should be more concerned about a single storm's overall strength instead of the amount in one season.
"You think that can't possibly happen because it's never happened before," Dessler said. "These things are going to be happening more and more frequently, things that have never happened before, things that exceed what you can imagine in destructiveness and we have to understand what's coming and prepare for it."
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