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Record hurricane season in Northeast Pacific Ocean

Ben Domensino, Thursday October 25, 2018 - 14:20 AEDT

The northeast Pacific Ocean just produced its most powerful hurricane season on record.

Hurricane Willa, which made landfall along Mexico's west coast this week, was the 13th hurricane of the 2018 season in the Northeast Pacific Ocean. This includes any systems that were active to the east of the dateline during the season.

Prior to landfall, Willa also became the 10th major hurricane (category three or higher) of the 2018 season in the Northeast Pacific, which is the second highest number on record, behind 11 in 2015.

But while 2015 may have had more major hurricanes than 2018, this year has been unprecedented when looking at a metric called the Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE).

The ACE is a calculation of the total energy put out by all tropical storms and hurricanes during a season based on the maximum wind speeds throughout their lifespan.

As of Wednesday October 24th, the running ACE value during the 2018 Northeast Pacific hurricane season was 313.4, according to data on the Colorado State University (CSU) Department of Atmospheric Science. This is more than double the Northeast Pacific's long-term average ACE value of 126.8 to this point in the season. It also beats the old ACE season record of 295 from 1992, according to Philip Klotzbach from CSU.

The Northeast Pacific hurricane season runs from mid-may May through to the end of November.

- Weatherzone

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