How Many Hurricanes Can There Be at Once?

Seeing a trio of powerful hurricanes

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simultaneously made a lot of people wonder: Just how many hurricanes can the Atlantic harbor at once?

To try to find an answer, we asked Dr. Anand Gnanadesikan, a climate modeler and professor of Earth and planetary sciences at the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. According to Gnanadesikan, the number of storms in the Atlantic depends on two main factors. The first is whether or not conditions are favorable to the development of tropical cyclones.