When will hurricane season end?

(NEXSTAR) – The death toll from Hurricane Helene continues to climb days after the storm devastated parts of the Southeastern U.S.  Flooding, power outages and closed roadways are also still hindering efforts to locate those who may be stranded in some of the hardest-hit areas, which include communities like Asheville, North Carolina, where dozens of deaths were reported as of Monday morning.

“It’s still very much an active search and rescue mission,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said Sunday of emergency efforts in western North Carolina.

A new tropical depression in the eastern Atlantic, meanwhile, could become a “formidable hurricane” later this week, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Sunday. The depression had sustained 35 mph (55kph) winds and was located about 585 miles (945 kilometers) west-southwest of the Cape Verde Islands, the center said. It could become a hurricane by Wednesday.

As of 8 a.m. ET on Monday morning, the NHC had also issued advisories for two other active storm systems in the Atlantic, though not necessarily any expected to make immediate landfall in the U.S.

But when can weather-watchers expect these disturbances to calm down?

“Most people think of hurricane season as summer, but yeah, we can get storms — powerful ones — all the way through October and into November as well,” says Steven Matregrano, a meteorologist with Nexstar’s WPRI, said earlier this month.

The official Atlantic hurricane season, which started on June 1, runs through Nov. 30.

“We still have a long way to go, to go through the season,” he added.

The typical hurricane season has around 14 “named” storms, “of which seven become hurricanes and three become major hurricanes,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). But in their latest forecast published in early August, the agency was still predicting an above-average season for activity in the Atlantic, with 17–24 “named” storms expected, including 8–13 possible hurricanes, and of which 4–7 were expected to be major hurricanes.

August through October is also considered the “peak” of the season. But that doesn’t mean an especially strong storm won’t develop outside of those months.

Hurricane Beryl, for instance, formed in late June to become the earliest Category 5 hurricane to develop in the Atlantic in history.

“Hurricane Beryl broke multiple long-standing records in the Atlantic basin, and we’re continuing to see the climatological hallmarks of an active season,” Matthew Rosencrans, a forecaster with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, said in the August news release.

It’s also hard for forecasters to say exactly where or when a storm might make landfall.

“This is because landfalls are largely predictable within about one week of a storm potentially reaching a coastline,” Rosencrans once explained.

As such, the National Weather Service advises anyone in the path of a storm or a evacuation zone to prepare by staying knowledgeable about potential disturbances, putting together emergency kits and having an evacuation plan, among other recommended steps.

“The best time to prepare for a hurricane is before hurricane season begins on June 1,” the NWS writes.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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