Outlook for the 2024 Hurricane Season
As we reach the end of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season while transitioning from El Niño to La Niña, the U.S. could be looking at a potentially record-setting year. The world’s oceans are hitting record highs with an average daily surface temperature of 69.64°F in August – an oddity, as the world’s oceans usually are the warmest in March. Now most, if not all, indicators are pointing to a more active than usual hurricane season as a result of the continuation and acceleration of the overall ocean and global warming trend. Rising air temperatures, reduced Atlantic trade winds, and multiple marine heatwaves are also contributors pushing ocean temperatures higher and breaking records:
- NOAA ranked July 2024 as the warmest month on record since global records began in 1850.
- The average U.S. air temperature in August was 74°F, almost 2°F above average.
- Florida had its 2nd warmest August on record, with ocean surface temperatures reaching 101°F in July, well over the usual 73 – 88°F range.
- Las Vegas, NV made history, reaching 120°F in July 2024.
Testing the Electrical Grids
Prolonged extreme temperatures and increasingly stronger storms have exposed the weaknesses in U.S. power grids and revealed how unprepared many areas with aging infrastructures are for these types of extreme weather events. Electrical grids in the U.S. were built during a time when weather was milder with shorter periods of sustained extreme temperatures. These aging grids cannot handle the demands of the punishing weather events that are becoming more prevalent today.
In 2023, the Biden administration announced the largest federal investment of $3.5 billion for grid modernization, along with over $4 billion promised by private sources. The federal Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships program is also working on grid modernization solutions, focusing on renewable energies to aid with electricity storage, transmission, and distribution to support a more resilient grid. These updated systems will produce fewer emissions and will be better able to withstand severe weather and natural disasters.
The Cost of Insurance Claims
Insurance carrier State Farm saw an unprecedented 16,000+ claims after Hurricane Beryl in July 2024, the first hurricane of the season to make landfall in the U.S., impacting the Greater Houston Area, other areas in Texas, Louisiana and as far north as Michigan and the Northeast following Beryl’s wake. And while the final damage and economic losses related to Beryl are estimated to be $28 – $32 billion, the damage, the duration of that storm’s activity (14 days), its fast intensification (gained 95mph in less than two days), the amount of rain it produced (as much as 4 inches per hour in some areas), and the 65 tornadoes it spawned were a wake-up call that is ringing well beyond the coastal regions usually impacted this time of year.
As of this writing, there have been six named storms so far this year, with Francine being the most recent to make landfall in Louisiana on September 11 with sustained winds of over 100mph. After being fed by 87°F ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, Francine left behind severe flooding, thousands without power, and an estimated $9 billion in damage across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
And hurricanes aren’t the only threat at this time of year. Unnamed tropical rainstorms are now a concern as well, as demonstrated on September 16 when the North Carolina coast received over 20 inches of rain from a tropical storm that brought high winds, storm surge, widespread flooding, and a bridge collapse, and is expected to continue delivering heavy rains as it heads inland.
The New Normal
- NOAA forecasters predict an 85 percent chance of an above-normal hurricane season in 2024, June 1 to November 30, with 17 – 25 named storms and an estimated 8 to 13 storms to become hurricanes.
- A 2020 article from the journal Nature reported that hurricanes are holding onto 25 percent more of their strength after the first day of landfall than in the 1960s.
- Findings from a Department of Energy – Pacific Northwest National Laboratory study show that since 1979, coastal conditions have changed in a way that is helping nearshore hurricanes intensify faster and project that trend will continue along with global warming tendencies. In addition, they predict that future storms may travel slower and produce more rainfall.
- NASA reported in March 2024 that the global average sea level has risen approximately 4 inches since 1993 and is accelerating, with a rise of approximately 0.3 inches from 2022 to 2023, a spike over the current rate of 0.17 inches per year due to a strong El Niño. NASA estimates a sea level rise of approximately 7.8 inches by 2050.
Hurricanes and tropical storms are forecasted to become stronger, last longer, and cause more damage to more areas of the U.S. in the years to come, making business continuity solutions more vital than ever for organizations of all sizes to prepare for, endure, and survive these challenging conditions.
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery are your Best Defense
Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recovery (DR) solutions are crucial for protecting vital business operations, securing sensitive data, and resuming operations quickly after extreme weather events and power outages.
Business continuity solutions refer to the ideas surrounding planning and execution of the steps and procedures to be taken during an event or outage to continue essential business operations, including the relocation of physical and digital assets if necessary. Conducting a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) identifies the mission-critical services, critical roles, and all weaknesses and areas of concern in various event scenarios. From those findings, a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is designed, detailing the staff, decision-making methods, exact steps, and protocols to be taken in each scenario. With these strategies in place, it will be possible to continue business operations, and voice and electronic communications, all while protecting your employees, assets, and sensitive data until operations can be fully restored.
Disaster Recovery refers to technology and data protection and their eventual restoration during a disaster, outage, accidental deletion, or cyberattack. A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) details the specific protocols to protect your systems and data during an event and restoration procedures afterward. Similar to the BCP, this could mean switching from your on-site server and storage to an off-site cloud backup server to maintain operations and security during an event. Afterwards, you can easily restore operations on-site within a recovery time objective (RTO) and within a recovery point objective (RPO), while keeping your data protected during transfer and at rest.
Disaster Recovery and Cloud Backup providers like PS Lightwave partner with you to develop your BIA, BCP, and DRP utilizing next-generation technologies to proactively support you with telecommunications and IT solutions customized for your business. With our dedicated, 24/7 network monitoring, we are vigilant and anticipatory in identifying and addressing potential issues or anomalies before they escalate. In addition, our local, live support technicians are always available to own your need through to its resolution.
PS Lightwave offers a full suite of telecommunications, VoIP, Hosted PBX, and Cloud Computing solutions on our own network, backed up by two border routers with redundant route processors located in separate and secure data centers. N+1 power with generator backup is standard, and each border router is connected to multiple upstream providers with numerous redundant uplinks to our Metro Ethernet core ring. This design allows PS Lightwave to provide its Internet service with high capacity and low latency.
We offer redundancy through facilities-based data rings, and our customers enjoy native IPv4 and IPv6 functionality. PS Lightwaves’ transport capabilities run from 10Mbps to 100G. We offer 100 percent native Ethernet optical Fiber using 100+ data ring networks’ built-in redundancy and Layer 2 infrastructure.
Data centers are a critical component of any disaster recovery plan, built to withstand most natural disasters and continue providing network support throughout these events. Colocation and managed server hosting are just two of the services these facilities typically offer. These services involve housing your IT infrastructure in a secured, off-site location where trained technicians monitor power and connectivity around the clock.
PS Lightwave has Fiber running to nearly twenty data centers throughout the Greater Houston Area for our customers’ convenience in addition to our LightHouse Data Center. The LightHouse is a 12,000-square-foot facility located near Houston’s Galleria business district, with redundant power, cooling, and connectivity to support hardware and hybrid solutions with all the major cloud providers. In addition to 99.999+% power availability, we have employees on-site 24/7/365 to ensure your network is connected no matter what.
Our in-house Network Operations Center (NOC) is a centralized location where inhouse IT teams are available 24x7x365 to perform smart hands functionality and can serve as the first line of defense against potential network failures or disruptions. This makes working with a network services provider that has a dedicated, robust NOC — like PS Lightwave — critical for quickly restoring your operations back to normal.
PS Lightwave has weathered storms, hurricanes, derechos, heat waves, deep freezes, and arctic blasts – we are your trusted provider of telecommunications systems, business continuity solutions, and disaster recovery services in the Houston area and beyond. PS Lightwave has the experience, equipment, and technologies to strengthen your network infrastructure, protect your operations, secure your data, and give you peace of mind so that you can focus on growing your business.
Don’t wait until the next storm hits to start thinking about protecting your business and sensitive data. Call us today at 888-514-3966, email us at info@PSLightwave.com, or click HERE to send us a message.
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