What Hurricane Season Means for Us

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released their list of next year's least popular baby names (or this year's hurricane names, depending on how you want to look at it). The NOAA is expecting a near-normal hurricane season for 2016, which runs from June through the end of November. While hurricanes obviously wreak havoc on the coastal areas they touchdown on, they can and do have a far reaching impact on the plains states of the Midwest.

The past three hurricane seasons have come in at below normal, but resulting heavy rainfall on the coasts, influencing rainfall further inland, have caused flooding through Iowa, Missouri and Illinois, and as far north as Wisconsin and Michigan, according to a 2014 study out of the University of Iowa, using data from the United States Geological Survey.

This of course doesn't guarantee any heavy flooding, but we are coming off an El Niño event year, albeit a weak one. So this fall and winter, we could expect some heavier than normal rainfall.