It's mid-May and just a couple of weeks away from the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season on June 1, so it’s time for AIR’s Annual Hurricane Contest!

This is the third year we have invited In Focus subscribers to enter a friendly competition like the one AIR staff participate in. All you have to do is answer four simple questions about the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season and submit your responses before the entry window closes on May 31. The questions are:

How many named tropical storms will form in the Atlantic this year? How many of those tropical storms will become hurricanes? How many will become major hurricanes (Saffir-Simpson Category 3 or higher)? How many hurricanes will make landfall in the mainland U.S.?

We will announce the results of the contest just after the end of the calendar year (hurricanes can form after the end of the official season). Last year’s winner, Travis Geyer, a Catastrophe Modeling Analyst with ASI (American Strategic Insurance), won a Family 72-Hour Emergency Preparedness Kit. This year’s winner will receive a personal weather station.

In the (entirely possible) event of a tie occurring—even after we have applied our well-established (but still rather baffling) tie-breaking procedure using the error count outlined in the rules of the contest given below—a random drawing will determine the winner.

In 2017 there were 17 named storms, 10 hurricanes, 6 major hurricanes, and 3 mainland U.S. hurricane landfalls. What do you think this year’s Atlantic hurricane season will bring?



Submit your entry for a chance to win!

Contest Rules:

Entries must be submitted by 4:59:59 p.m. (Eastern Time) on May 31, 2018.

You must fill out the entire form using only non-negative integers and provide only one value for each field in the entry form.

It is recommended, though not required, that your entry follow these inequalities:

named storms ≥ hurricanes ≥ major hurricanes; hurricanes ≥ mainland U.S. hurricane landfalls

The winner will have the lowest combined error of total named storms in the Atlantic basin, total hurricanes, total major (category 3, 4, or 5) hurricanes, and mainland U.S. landfalling hurricanes.

The contest runs through December 31, 2018. In the event that a storm forms, becomes major, or makes landfall past that date, it will not count.

The National Hurricane Center's reanalysis by the end of the year will be the validation set, regardless of how the storm was named or categorized at the time.

The error count = |guessed named storms – actual named storms| + |guessed hurricanes – actual hurricanes| + |guessed major storms – actual major storms| + |guessed mainland U.S. landfalling hurricanes – actual mainland U.S. landfalling hurricanes.

In the event of a tie occurring even after applying the error count outlined above, a random drawing will determine the winner.

All data used in determining storm count error will come from the National Hurricane Center, as of December 31, 2018.

The winner will be announced after December 31, 2018, and the prize will be delivered before the end of January 2019.

Interfering with the contest is not permitted. For example, you are not allowed to seed clouds in a storm to try to prevent it from gaining strength. Similarly, you may not put ice into the ocean beneath a storm to try cooling the sea surface temperature. In the event of interference, successful or otherwise, your entry will be disqualified.

If an issue comes up that is not addressed in these rules, a decision will be made by an appropriate subject matter expert within AIR.



Read “Top 10 Historical Hurricanes in the U.S.: What Would They Cost Today?” to get a sense of the potential impact.