The National Hurricane Center is “fully staffed” and any suggestion that the Trump administration fired meteorologists at the National Weather Service is “fake news,” “preposterous and silly,” Commerce Sec.

If the storm becomes tropical later this week, it will be the first tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told a congressional committee that the U.S. National Hurricane Center was fully staffed even though key positions are going unfilled as hurricane season begins.

This year's hurricane season marks a significant turning point in weather forecasting with artificial intelligence models being integrated into the analytical toolkit of forecasters at the National Hurricane Center.

What goes in a hurricane preparedness kit? How to prep for 2025 storm season, which is expected to be one of the most active on record.

Thanks to continually improving tools like regularly upgraded forecast models, weather forecasting has advanced significantly. The National Hurricane Center, for instance, constantly analyzes these models -- now integrating artificial intelligence -- to produce the most accurate hurricane forecasts.

The National Hurricane Center uses the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale which estimates potential property damage using a 1 to 5 rating depending on the sustained wind speed of a specific hurricane.