The National Hurricane Center is looking at its track record for the 2024 season, and it is a good one in terms of forecast accuracy.

Of course, the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season was brutal for those in the United States, which was hit by five hurricanes, including major hurricanes Helene and Milton.

But the track forecasts were the best in the hurricane center’s history, according to a preview of the 2024 storm verification report.

The hurricane center released the preview on Monday and said the full report will follow in the spring.

The NHC said the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season “exhibited above-normal levels of activity by nearly every metric.”

Those include number of storms (including hurricanes and major hurricanes), and ACE, which stands for accumulated cyclone energy, which the hurricane center describes as the measure of the strength and duration of all tropical cyclones.

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The Atlantic basin had 18 named storms. Eleven of those were hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or greater) and five intensified to major hurricanes (winds of 111 mph or greater).

The hurricane center issued 347 forecasts in the Atlantic in 2024, which it said was slightly above the long-term (1990-2023) average of about 325 forecasts.

Those forecasts were record-breaking in terms of track accuracy. According to the hurricane center “the mean track errors at every forecast interval (12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72, 96, and 120 hours) broke records for accuracy, meaning that NHC’s 2024 forecast track performance was its best in history.”

The hurricane center shared a graph of its forecast track errors, which shows a lot of ups and downs. However, the hurricane center pointed out that “the long-term trends are very pronounced and show significant progress at lowering track errors.”

The hurricane center said a preliminary analysis shows that NHC forecasts were more accurate than all the individual hurricane forecast models. The hurricane center added that “NHC’s forecasts were more consistent, changing less from cycle to cycle, compared to the global models.”

The report also noted that intensity forecasts continue to be a challenge. The hurricane center said that its intensity errors in 2024 were a little higher than the past few years.

According to the hurricane center there were 34 instances where storms when through rapid intensification, which is an increase of winds at least 35 mph in 24 hours. Those 34 instances were nearly double the average over the past 10 years.

The hurricane center said forecasting rapid intensification “remains one of the most significant challenges in hurricane forecasting.”

Although intensity forecasting remains difficult, the hurricane center noted in the report several smaller factors that showed progress was being made.

The full report will go into more detail about the forecast process for the 2024 season, the hurricane center said.