One Weather Firm Warns That New England Could See Big Hurricane This Season

All of the best-known storm forecasting services have predicted a mild 2026 Atlantic hurricane season. That includes Colorado State University, which last week revised its outlook to “well below normal” with just nine named storms, four hurricanes, and only one of them a major hurricane.

But one lesser-known forecaster—whose service was recently bought out by National Weather Forecasting (NWF), a steadily growing forecasting firm, is, so far, sticking to its initial estimate of 13 named storms and four major hurricanes. And the service, pioneered by Florida meteorologist David Dilley, offers (for a subscription fee), something the other diviners don’t: a probability of which region of the U.S. coastline where the big ones will make landfall.

And, this year, that spells bad news for the New York-New England area.

“It’s been a long time since there’s been a hurricane that big,” said Russ Murley, president of Maine-headquartered NWF and a meteorologist for 45 years, including a four-year stint as a TV news meteorologist.

Murley and Dilley, who’s based in Ocala, Florida, said weather cycle data suggests the hurricane could be as big and as bad as the famous hurricane that struck New England in 1938 and killed more than 680 people. That one churned up an estimated $300 million in property losses (more than $2 billion in today’s dollars), according to news reports.

The way Dilley sees it, using data from decades-long warming and cooling cycles and from centuries-long gravitational changes, the earth is actually entering a cooling period, one that will likely present its own set of problems over the next decade or so. That phase-change is when some of the strongest storms have formed, including the 1938 monster, he argued.

“This could really be one of historic proportions,” Dilley told Insurance Journal last week.

Dilley has toiled away in relative obscurity for years. His service, known as Global Weather Oscillations (GWO) until it was purchased this year by NWF, seems to have a loyal and fervent following among some home builders, event planners and a few U.S. property insurance companies, including Florida’s state-created Citizens Property Insurance Corp. Dilley said he started scouring a range of data points, initially, to better predict El Ninos, the eastern Pacific Ocean phenomenon that influences weather systems for much of the planet.

“Then a friend said, ‘Can’t you use this for hurricanes?'” Dilley said. “And, by gosh, it worked.”

The recent purchase by NWF has put Dilley’s unusual predictions more on the map and has extended NWF’s long-range and seasonal capabilities, positioning NWF to become a larger player in the weather game. Besides Dilley’s GWO service, NWF has recently purchased Metro Weather Service and a New York-focused company. Murley said his firm also offers more granular weather analysis for venues such as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Raymond James Stadium and the New York Mets baseball team, as well as temperature forecasts for areas as specific as roads and highways—a crucial factor for road builders and repair contractors.

Most of the high-profile hurricane forecast services provide only numbers of predicted storms. GWO and now NWF say they take it a big step further, noting where a storm is likely to hit.

“That makes us very unique,” Dilley said.

New England is part of NWF’s Zone 1, where the service predicts a 33% chance of a major hurricane this season. Zone 9, from Alabama to Texas, shows the next-highest probability: a 20% chance of a hurricane, Murley explained. Other zones show relatively low chances of an organized storm system. The company won’t give more precise predictions without a subscription, which can run $350 to $2,500, depending on the product.

Dilley has claimed a 75% accuracy rate on hurricanes over the last two decades. But he’s not always correct. Last year, he called for one major hurricane to strike the west coast of Florida. Such a storm never materialized.

But he also has had some successes: Hurricane Irma, a powerful, Category 4 tempest that hit Florida in 2017. While most weather firms were predicting the tempest would move up Florida’s east coast, Dilley said his data showed it crossing over and raking the state’s west coast as much as a week before that became evident.