This year's hurricane season has shown no signs of letting up, entering September with several concerning developments taking place in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Meteorologists have been closely tracking at least three worrisome weather patterns, including one in the Atlantic that has a 70% chance of becoming a tropical depression over the next week, USA Today reported.
Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Lorena has experts warning of "significant flash flooding" in parts of Baja California, according to USA Today.
In addition to closely watching the developing weather system in the Atlantic Ocean and Tropical Storm Lorena in the Pacific, the National Hurricane Center has also been monitoring Hurricane Kiko, which was located approximately 2,000 miles east of Hawaiʻi, per USA Today.
Meteorologists have predicted that Tropical Storm Lorena will reach hurricane strength within a matter of days, potentially making landfall in Mexico's Baja California on Sept. 5 with winds as high as 80 miles per hour.
Forecasters have said they expect Lorena to bring torrential rains to northwest Mexico and potentially the southwestern United States, the USA Today report said. With the rains will come a high risk of flash floods, particularly in mountainous regions.
Meanwhile, a potentially dangerous weather system continued to develop in the Atlantic, south of the Cabo Verde Islands. Weather models have predicted that the system, presently classified as a tropical wave, was more likely than not to become a tropical depression.
According to the National Weather Service, a tropical depression is a "tropical cyclone that has maximum sustained surface winds (one-minute average) of 38 mph (33 knots) or less."
Should wind speeds continue to increase, a tropical depression can become a tropical storm (39 to 73 miles per hour) and even a hurricane (74 miles per hour or greater), per the NWS.
For decades, scientists have warned that rising global temperatures would increase the severity of extreme weather events like hurricanes, making them even more destructive.
Tropical storms and hurricanes take human lives while destroying homes, businesses, and crops, causing food prices and insurance premiums to go up well beyond the storms' reach.
The Environmental Defense Fund has explained how rising temperatures result in more severe storms.
"Evaporation intensifies as temperatures rise, and so does the transfer of heat from the oceans to the air," the EDF said on its website. "As the storms travel across warm oceans, they pull in more water vapor and heat, adding more energy to the storm."
"This means heavier rainfall, stronger wind, and more flooding when the storms hit land," the EDF continued.
In the immediate terms, local communities can protect themselves from more intense storms by investing in more resilient infrastructure. This means building higher sea walls, expanding the capacity of storm drains, and updating building codes.
Over the long term, the only way to reverse the trend of more severe storms is to reduce the amount of planet-heating pollution entering the atmosphere. This will require transitioning the world's economy away from dirtier, nonrenewable fuels like coal and natural gas and toward cleaner, renewable sources of energy like solar.
Pairing solar panels with a home battery system can help reduce heat-trapping pollution while lowering your electricity bill and making your home more resilient in the face of weather-related power outages.
EnergySage offers powerful online tools that make it easy to find a solar installer in your area and to identify tax credits and other government incentives, saving customers as much as $10,000.
However, with federal solar tax credits ending Dec. 31, 2025 and the average solar installation taking 12 weeks to complete, you must act quickly to take advantage of the savings.