Hurricane Season Should Hit Retail Early

(MoneyWatch)  Hurricane season looks to be about normal this year according to Planalytics, a weather forecasting firm, but it may have its own quirks that retailers might take into consideration as they help consumers deal with the threat.

Retailers in hurricane prone regions often see a big impact from storms that can prompt major sales around preparedness and clean up or that can shut down whole markets and kill store sales for weeks. This year, it looks like retailers may at least want to promote their storm preparedness products early because the forecast calls for conditions to shift toward less hurricane activity as the summer wears on.

Jim Rouiller, senior energy meteorologist for Planalytics, said that hurricanes are less likely to form in the late season than the early as a developing El Nino condition in the Pacific suppresses hurricane formation in the Atlantic.

Yet, it's not only a storm's intensity that causes consumers to start taking storm precautions but also whether the National Hurricane Center tosses the tempest a name, which generally prompts consumers it might effect to check their storm supplies and get to a store if they're short on critical items. "When a storm gets a name is more a function of the National Hurricane Center that in is a point of climatology," said Evan Gold, Planalytics vice president, client services.

So storm-smart retailers also might pay attention to the hurricane center's reaction to developments as they plan whether and when to promote emergency items.

Recent events have caused media speculation about storms arising closer to North America than is typically the case. Rouiller said that kind of storm generation is a function of local conditions and would become less prevalent as the season progressed. What is more important from the standpoint of hurricane formation is what's happening across the Atlantic near the Cape Verde Islands.

Last year, conditions from a La Nina event in the Pacific helped set the stage for a very active season and 16 named storms, essentially by leaving the Cape Verdes alone. However, as conditions shift from a La Nina to an El Nino, wind sheer in the atmosphere's upper altitudes generated in the Pacific will increase and help chop down storm systems that build around those islands, making tropical disturbances less likely to develop into hurricanes. Also, dust storms in North Africa, another force that cuts off hurricane formation, have become more prevalent. So, the prediction of a normal season, with 10 named stores and about six hurricanes, will likely come with a shift of storm activity toward the first half of the season. Retailers might want to plan inventories accordingly.