Why have Louisiana and Gulf Coast been a magnet for hurricanes in 2020?
MONROE, La. – Louisiana has been a punching bag during the 2020 hurricane season, whether taking a glancing blow from Tropical Storm Cristobal in June, a whiff from Hurricane Marco in August, a haymaker from Hurricane Laura on Aug. 27 and a late-round blow from Hurricane Delta Friday night.
Two other storms — Hurricane Sally and Tropical Storm Beta — also threatened Louisiana before making landfall at Gulf Coast neighbors Alabama and Texas, respectively.
Hurricane Sally was particularly damaging to Alabama's sliver of coast and the panhandle cities of Florida like Pensacola.
Hurricane Delta live updates: Louisiana, still recovering from Laura, braces for another massive storm
"This season has been relentless,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said earlier this week.
"It has just been exhausting," said The Weather Channel's Stephanie Abrams, who was stationed in Jennings Friday awaiting Hurricane Delta's landfall.
A record-breaking season
Louisiana has found itself in a dreaded storm cone six times in 2020, but she hasn't been alone.
Hurricane Delta will be the 10th tropical cyclone to make landfall in the United States this year, breaking a record set in 1916.
Ben Schott, the lead meteorologist at the National Weather Service's New Orleans station, blamed La Niña as a major factor in the record-breaking season.
"If you go back to the beginning of the season it was forecast to be very active," Schott said. "La Niña is a good setup for storms to develop in the Atlantic."
La Niña is a natural ocean-atmospheric phenomenon marked by cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures across the central and eastern Pacific Ocean near the equator, the opposite of El Niño, which features warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in that region.
"La Niña can contribute to an increase in Atlantic hurricane activity by weakening the wind shear over the Caribbean Sea and tropical Atlantic Basin, which enables storms to develop and intensify," said Mike Halpert, deputy director of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Prediction Center, in an agency report.
"The potential for La Niña development was factored into our updated Atlantic hurricane season outlook issued in August,” Halpert said.
As for why Louisiana has been a magnet for storms in 2020, Schott said: "It's just bad luck."
"I hate to say it that way, but it's true," he said. "I can't give you a scientific reason we've been the target. It just seems like the atmospheric factors that steer these storms have set up to steer them our way this year."
And Schott issued a sobering reminder: "The hurricane season isn't over until Nov. 30."
Follow Greg Hilburn on Twitter: @GregHilburn1.
This article originally appeared on Monroe News-Star: Hurricane Delta: Why so many Louisiana, Gulf Coast hurricanes in 2020?
