Will 2020 reach hyperactive status in terms of ACE?

[Ryxn]

I am referring to hyperactive in terms of ACE which, according to Wikipedia, requires an ACE value of 152.5 or more.

Right now, the basin is at 121.4 and needs 31.1 more do attain hyperactive status. The total ACE for all Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean storms for 2020 (excluding Isaias which was brief in the eastern Caribbean) is 52.8 units.

The last 5 Gulf/Caribbean storms total 19.2 ACE and if you include Laura, it is 32 units. I think if we get a strong storm or 2 plus a few weak and or short-lived storms, we could reach hyperactivity status.

If you think reaching 152.5 is too easy, we could put the bar at 2010's 165.5 units.

However, it's fair to presume that 200 units is out of reach.

Where will 2020's ACE finish?

□Less than 130
□130-139 1 vote
□140-149
□150-159
□160 or more

Will 2020 reach hyperactivity?

□Yes
□No 3 votes

Will 2020 surpass 2010's ACE?

□Yes
□No 3 votes

Will 2020 surpass 2016's ACE (141.3)?

□Yes
□No

Thoughts?

[zal0phus]

I don't think it will. The season seems to be slowly winding down and majors have been very rare this year for all the activity. 2020 will be remembered as a uniquely bizarre hurricane season, I think.

[CyclonicFury]

Most likely not. It would take an intense burst of late season activity to get there (about 30 ACE after Delta). Not impossible, but unlikely.

It is unclear exactly when the season will wind down, but I wouldn't be surprised if Delta is the last major, or if we only have a few more named storms for the rest of the season. We are exiting the peak portion of the season, though I think we may get one more notable storm.

[aspen]

I think 145-155 ACE is possible if the WCar produces an even stronger and slower major hurricane. Delta is set to rack up a total of ~15 ACE, so if another WCar monster bombs out this year and becomes even stronger — which isn’t impossible — it could get 20-30 ACE. A couple of late-season wandering systems that refuse to die like 2005’s Delta and Epsilon could accumulate a total of 5-15 ACE, and a few late season hurricanes like Oscar ‘18 or Tomas ‘10 could also add 5-10 ACE.

If any of these occur, 2020 could end up anywhere between 130 ACE at a minimum and 175 ACE at a maximum. 135-140 ACE looks like a good bet, just below hyperactive levels.

[toad strangler]

It's already reached HA status in my eyes.. Not a fan of ACE being the sole determination.

[Astromanía]

I'm not a fan of weak tropical storms, activity for me is ACE, even with name records, 2005 or 2017 or 2010 >>>>>> 2020

[toad strangler]

:uarrow:
I'm not a fan of weak tropical storms, activity for me is ACE, even with name records, 2005 or 2017 or 2010 >>>>>> 2020

There have been multiple strong storms this year. They weren't long trackers, so ACE is blind to them.

[aspen]

It's already reached HA status in my eyes.. Not a fan of ACE being the sole determination.

If you go by the metric I made, Instantaneous Cyclone Energy (ICE), then 2020 is on the verge of meeting hyperactive criteria. It’s at 556 units and will have to surpass 580 units (1.5x 1977-2016 average) to be classified as hyperactive, which can be accomplished by a moderate Cat1 hurricane (for comparison, Hanna was 31.86 units).

[Hypercane_Kyle]

:uarrow:
I'm not a fan of weak tropical storms, activity for me is ACE, even with name records, 2005 or 2017 or 2010 >>>>>> 2020

Not even the NHC considers ACE a good measurement, just FYI. Eric Blake is pretty vocal about that.

[ElectricStorm]

I don't care what the final ACE total is... This is a hyperactive season in my book. 25 named storms (so far... Still only in early October so we certainly could have more), a record 10 storms hitting the CONUS (again... So far). Multiple other areas hit by other significant storms as well. So while the ACE may be below the "official" hyperactive standard, to me a season like this is hyperactive... Just my opinion

[tolakram]

:uarrow:
I'm not a fan of weak tropical storms, activity for me is ACE, even with name records, 2005 or 2017 or 2010 >>>>>> 2020

Valid opinion, of course, but what if we had 5 cat 5 storms that all forms and intensified close to the coast, made landfall, and overall ACE was limited? Seems like any single measurement of hyperactivity is flawed.

[Hammy]

:uarrow:
I'm not a fan of weak tropical storms, activity for me is ACE, even with name records, 2005 or 2017 or 2010 >>>>>> 2020

Valid opinion, of course, but what if we had 5 cat 5 storms that all forms and intensified close to the coast, made landfall, and overall ACE was limited? Seems like any single measurement of hyperactivity is flawed.

A simpler metric could apply the ACE formula to the peak intensity. Something else I do if I want a quick comparison is add the storm/hurricane/major totals together and multiply Hx2, MHx3 and Cat 5's x4.

As to the thread question I don't think we're going to exceed 140 ACE as the season has favored more western-based activity.

[aspen]

:uarrow:
I'm not a fan of weak tropical storms, activity for me is ACE, even with name records, 2005 or 2017 or 2010 >>>>>> 2020

Valid opinion, of course, but what if we had 5 cat 5 storms that all forms and intensified close to the coast, made landfall, and overall ACE was limited? Seems like any single measurement of hyperactivity is flawed.

A simpler metric could apply the ACE formula to the peak intensity.

That’s kind of what my ICE formula does. It’s a metric based on minimum pressure (P) and maximum winds (W). Units of ICE are significantly higher than units of ACE, though.

The formula: ICE = ((1015-P)x(W-25))/72.5

Going by ICE, 2020 is 44% above-average, while it’s only 16-20% above average in terms of ACE.

[HurricaneEdouard]

To me, 2020 is just proof of how poor a metric ACE is (and, as mentioned above, NHC hurricane specialists such as Eric Blake agree), and I'm not sure why it became all the rage in the tropical weather community over the last 5 to 10 years. (It was literally never mentioned on here or the FLHurricane forums in 2004 or 2005, which were hailed as legendarily hyperactive purely due to their seasonal totals and number of storms impacting land.) It is completely weighted towards long-lived Cape Verde hurricanes and both 2005 and 2020 were westward-based seasons with short-lived major hurricanes.

2020 is already hyperactive, by far. We've had the most named storms in history up until this point in the calendar year, and may well surpass 30 named storms by the end of the season; consider that the broad consensus in the tropical weather community was that we'd probably never see anything like 2005 again in our lifetimes, and we're well on our way to beating it. We've had the most U.S. named storm landfalls in history (10), compared to 8 in 2004 and 7 in 2005. We've had 5 hurricanes hitting the U.S., tying for the record of third place alongside 2004 and 2005 (just behind 1886 and 1985).

2005 had Hurricane Katrina strike Louisiana as a 125mph Category 3 in late August; 2020 had a 150mph Category 4 Hurricane Laura strike a less vulnerable area of Louisiana in late August, tying as the tenth strongest U.S. landfall and strongest Louisiana landfall (by windspeed) in history. 2005 had Hurricane Rita strike Louisiana as a 115mph Category 3 in late September; 2020 had Hurricane Sally strike Alabama and the Florida Panhandle on the 16th anniversary of Ivan in late September with a similar (quite possibly the exact same, if post-season analysis upgrades it to a 115mph Category 3) intensity to Rita and Ivan both. 2005 had Hurricane Wilma strike Florida as a Category 3 in October; 2020 has just seen Hurricane Delta strike roughly the same area Laura hit (just like 2004's Category 2 Frances and Category 3 Jeanne double-punch) as a large Category 2 in October, and there is still the possibility of another major hurricane in late October or November.

Yes, we've had proportionally fewer major hurricanes than 2005, but every season's proportions are different, and if we count Sally, we've had four already - which would have been considered highly above-average here in the 2000s. We've tied 2004 for its hurricane totals.

I honestly think the unprecedented spate of recent Category 5 landfalls like Michael, Irma, Maria and Dorian have "spoiled" us, making us forget that 2004 was infamous because of four Category 2 to 4 U.S. landfalls, and that 2005 was infamous because of four Category 3 U.S. landfalls. Sure, 2020's significant U.S. landfalls didn't peak at Category 5 status like 2005's (but Laura beat all of 2004 and 2005's bunch for landfalling windspeed, tying Charley for winds and beating it for pressure), our West Caribbean pinhole got unexpectedly sheared and collapsed after unprecedentedly explosive intensification into a Category 4 rather than peaking in Wilma territory like we thought, and we didn't have the July freaks of Dennis and Emily, but otherwise, 2020 is remarkably similar to 2005 and is undeniably hyperactive and extremely impactful for the U.S., just like 2004, 2005 and 2017. Just depends on how you measure it (e.g. 2017 was far costlier than 2005 - another thing we didn't expect to see again in our lifetimes - despite being less active).

We've also seen many crazy records broken like we came to expect of 2005; our Vince, Alpha, becoming the easternmost named storm in history and striking Portugal at the same time as a hurricane was making landfall in Greece, that insane flurry of activity in September tying the record for most simultaneous tropical cyclones (5) at once, technically breaking the record for most simultaneous named storms, and resulting in the most active September in history with 10 named storms... and 2020 is not over yet. More records, more major hurricanes, more U.S. landfalls and more general hyperactive craziness may still await us.

[TheStormExpert]

Nope! Honestly I wish there was a different way to measure Accumulated Cyclone Energy that also goes by land impacts.

[Nuno]

2020 is already hyperactive, ACE be damned.

To me, 2020 is just proof of how poor a metric ACE is (and, as mentioned above, NHC hurricane specialists such as Eric Blake agree), and I'm not sure why it became all the rage in the tropical weather community over the last 5 to 10 years. (It was essentially never mentioned on here or the FLHurricane forums in 2004 or 2005, which were hailed as legendarily hyperactive purely due to their seasonal totals and number of storms impacting land.) It is completely weighted towards long-lived Cape Verde hurricanes and both 2005 and 2020 were westward-based seasons with short-lived major hurricanes.

A search shows that ACE isn't even mentioned on S2K until 2007. As useful as ACE can be, the obsession this forum and the weather community have with it as a singular end-all be-all metric is meme-worthy. I hope 2020 has taught many people a lesson about the complexity of tropical weather and that this isn't like baseball where you can describe everything with a singular cute acronym statistic.

[HurricaneEdouard]

2020 is already hyperactive, ACE be damned.

To me, 2020 is just proof of how poor a metric ACE is (and, as mentioned above, NHC hurricane specialists such as Eric Blake agree), and I'm not sure why it became all the rage in the tropical weather community over the last 5 to 10 years. (It was essentially never mentioned on here or the FLHurricane forums in 2004 or 2005, which were hailed as legendarily hyperactive purely due to their seasonal totals and number of storms impacting land.) It is completely weighted towards long-lived Cape Verde hurricanes and both 2005 and 2020 were westward-based seasons with short-lived major hurricanes.

A search shows that ACE isn't even mentioned on S2K until 2007. As useful as ACE can be, the obsession this forum and the weather community have with it as a singular end-all be-all metric is meme-worthy. I hope 2020 has taught many people a lesson about the complexity of tropical weather and that this isn't like baseball where you can describe everything with a singular cute acronym statistic.

Well said.

It can be useful in conjunction with other metrics, but it is far from the only one. When Delta became the ninth hurricane of the season, it placed 2020 in rare territory, alongside only 1995, 2004 and 2005 in the satellite era, in having 9 hurricanes form by October 5th. The West Pacific season is incredibly inactive (historically so in that no storms formed in July), the only time, alongside 2005 and 2010, that the Atlantic season has been more active than the West Pacific.

A quantitative measurement is only as good as its ability to capture the general quality it is trying to measure (although on that note, ACE wasn't even designed to measure seasonal activity, so has been chronically misused since its inception); when every other metric is screaming record-breaking hyperactivity, you throw out the bad metric rather than the season. Otherwise, it's a little like arguing Hurricane Wilma was not the most intense Atlantic hurricane, or even one of the most intense, because its Dvorak T-numbers were comparatively low (because the Dvorak method failed to capture its pinhole eye).

[Ptarmigan]

It's already reached HA status in my eyes.. Not a fan of ACE being the sole determination.

I like to see how much energy hurricane season produce. A larger hurricane has more energy than smaller hurricane.

Valid opinion, of course, but what if we had 5 cat 5 storms that all forms and intensified close to the coast, made landfall, and overall ACE was limited? Seems like any single measurement of hyperactivity is flawed.

A simpler metric could apply the ACE formula to the peak intensity.

That’s kind of what my ICE formula does. It’s a metric based on minimum pressure (P) and maximum winds (W). Units of ICE are significantly higher than units of ACE, though.

The formula: ICE = ((1015-P)x(W-25))/72.5

Going by ICE, 2020 is 44% above-average, while it’s only 16-20% above average in terms of ACE.

I like using ICE. Unfortunately, prior to recon and satellite, hurricanes we do not know the central pressure.

[Chris90]

I think when it comes to hyperactivity it should be more a checklist, instead of needing to reach a certain amount of ACE, although I do think ACE is still a good metric to use. I think seasons can be hyperactive in different ways and that should be recognized. This season has been hyperactive in storm counts and landfalls, and we have a chance of breaking the storm count from 2005.
That said, this season is obviously no 2005 when it comes to intensity and ACE, and if you compare the top 5 storms by pressure of 2005 with the top 5 storms of this season so far, it’s a pretty clear picture.

2005 2020
882mb 937mb
895mb 945mb
902mb 953mb
929mb 965mb
930mb 965mb

ALL Top 5 storms of 2005 beat the strongest storm of 2020. Has 2020 been hyperactive and devastating? Yes. But I also think the hyperactivity of 2020 serves as additional reinforcement showing just what a freak of a season 2005 was. Back-to-back July majors, one of them Cat 5; 2 storms going sub-900 with a third getting awfully close. 2005 was probably something like a 1-in-500 or 1-in-1000 year event, and I think some, myself included, have been holding 2020 to an unfair standard based on 2005 since conditions were so favorable and it kept beating storm formation records from 2005, so by the time August 15th rolled around it was like “ok, here come the 900mb monsters.”

But 2020 has been hyperactive. We got to the Greeks. Multiple devastating landfalls. I don’t think a season has to reach a certain ACE or produce storms of a certain intensity to be hyperactive, there’s different qualifiers in my opinion.

[aspen]

I think when it comes to hyperactivity it should be more a checklist, instead of needing to reach a certain amount of ACE, although I do think ACE is still a good metric to use. I think seasons can be hyperactive in different ways and that should be recognized. This season has been hyperactive in storm counts and landfalls, and we have a chance of breaking the storm count from 2005.
That said, this season is obviously no 2005 when it comes to intensity and ACE, and if you compare the top 5 storms by pressure of 2005 with the top 5 storms of this season so far, it’s a pretty clear picture.

2005 2020
882mb 937mb
895mb 945mb
902mb 953mb
929mb 965mb
930mb 965mb

ALL Top 5 storms of 2005 beat the strongest storm of 2020. Has 2020 been hyperactive and devastating? Yes. But I also think the hyperactivity of 2020 serves as additional reinforcement showing just what a freak of a season 2005 was. Back-to-back July majors, one of them Cat 5; 2 storms going sub-900 with a third getting awfully close. 2005 was probably something like a 1-in-500 or 1-in-1000 year event, and I think some, myself included, have been holding 2020 to an unfair standard based on 2005 since conditions were so favorable and it kept beating storm formation records from 2005, so by the time August 15th rolled around it was like “ok, here come the 900mb monsters.”

But 2020 has been hyperactive. We got to the Greeks. Multiple devastating landfalls. I don’t think a season has to reach a certain ACE or produce storms of a certain intensity to be hyperactive, there’s different qualifiers in my opinion.

Defining hyperactivity by different metrics is a decent idea. 2005 was truly the ultimate hyperactive season, and can be defined as one in every single metric — numbers of NS/H/MH, intensity of the strongest systems, overall ACE, and overall ICE (my own intensity metric that serves a similar function as ACE, but includes pressure and excludes duration).

2005 was an extreme quantity AND quality season, one that will be very hard to match, even with climate change; warmer-than-average SSTs won’t matter if the rest of the environment sucks. 2020 is an extreme quantity-over-quality hyperactive year (“only” 120 ACE and 1.4x average ICE despite 25 named storms), while 1996 is the opposite: an extreme quality>quantity season, which only had 14 NS, but was hyperactive in terms of ACE (166), hurricanes (9), and majors (6), and nearly hyperactive in terms of ICE (1.45x average). You won’t see 1996 among the top 10 most active years in terms of ACE and named storms, but it definitely deserves the hyperactive title in terms of everything else.

1988, 1998, and 1999 are other examples of quality>quantity hyperactive seasons, while 2011, 2012, and 2019 were other quantity>quality years. Seasons like 2004 and 2017 fall down the middle but lean closer to the former grouping in terms of named storms (almost as much ACE and majors as 2005 despite 16-17 NS). It goes to show that one or two defining metrics aren’t always enough.