This Hurricane Season Is Unprecedented
A very strange climate drove Hurricane Idalia. Scientists can’t predict whether more storms like it are coming.
Updated at 5:29 p.m. on August 31, 2023
Earlier this week, mission control commanded the International Space Station to turn its cameras toward the Gulf of Mexico. Giant white clouds, gleaming against the blue of the planet’s oceans and the blackness of space beyond, indicated the arrival of Hurricane Idalia, hovering menacingly off the coast of Florida. From that high-flying view, you couldn’t tell exactly how much havoc Idalia would wreak—the record-breaking storm surges; the flooding across Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas—or the very unusual conditions in which the storm had formed.
This hurricane season has been a weird one, because two opposing trends are driving storm
