Was the Atlantic Hurricane Season in January 2023 Actually Initiated?

As I write this, we are about 3 weeks away from the traditional “start” of the Atlantic hurricane season. June 1st is traditionally considered the beginning of the season even though the peak of the season comes a few months later as water temperatures heat up. In recent years, I have pondered whether the concept of a “hurricane season” is becoming obsolete. Tropical systems form outside of the January to November “season.” Well, the National Hurricane Center just gave me another data point to consider. In May 2023, it announced that a Subtropical storm formed in the mid-January. So did the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season start then?

Well, sort of. Colorado State University hurricane expert Phil Klotzbach’s tweet below provides a little context.

The National Hurricane Center conductive a retroactive assessment of the storm and concluded that it was a Subtropical storm. They wrote, “This subtropical storm is being numbered as the first cyclone of 2023 in the Atlantic basin and will be given AL012023 as its system ID,” Candidly, some of this is a lot of “insider semantics” from the perspective of most of you, but it does matter from a climatological and research perspective.

So what is a subtropical storm anyhow? NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division website gives the following definition for a subtropical cyclone – “a low-pressure system existing in the tropical or subtropical latitudes (anywhere from the equator to about 50°N) that has characteristics of both tropical cyclones and mid-latitude (or extratropical) cyclones.” Translating this meteorological speak, it is extracting its energy from air temperature differences (gradients) and from warm waters. They should be taken seriously too. My tweet from a few years ago emphasized an important point by veteran meteorologist Tom Moore.

A National Weather Service website further expands on these types of systems. They point out, “The difference between a subtropical storm and a tropical storm is not that important as far as the winds they can generate, but tropical storms generate more rain… If a subtropical storm intensifies enough to have hurricane force winds, than it must have become fully tropical.” In other words, there is no such thing as a “subtropical hurricane.”

Systems with tropical characteristics are rare in January but not unprecedented. Hurricane Alex formed in 2016. It was only the 2nd hurricane to form in January within the Atlantic basin. The first January-forming hurricane (on record at least) was 1938. Hurricane Alice (1955) was present in January, but it actually formed in December. Hurricane Alex is the strongest January hurricane in recorded history.

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