Enlarge / Hurricane Irma as seen by satellite in 2019. (credit: NOAA)

Congratulations, everyone—we’ve made it to the startline of the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season.

Fasten your seatbelts because it could be a wild and bumpy ride. Or maybe not. Because when it comes to tropical activity, no one can be sure what will happen more than a few days into the future. And after about 10 or 12 days? Chaos theory rules, baby.

Not everyone needs to read this article, but many of you do. According to the US Census, more than 60 million Americans live in coastal areas vulnerable to tropical systems in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. For those residents, including yours truly, the threat of a tropical storm or hurricane lurks in the back of one’s mind during the summer months like the dull pain of a past injury. The longer it has been since a nearby landfall, the more distant the hum. But it’s there.