Hurricane forecasters are increasingly using artificial intelligence to make predictions — and they say the technology is rapidly transforming the field.

When the first hurricane of the Atlantic season formed this month, an AI model beat out traditional models at predicting where it would go.

In early October, Hurricane Isaias made landfall near Destin, Fla., as a Category 2 storm. Conventional forecasting models initially predicted it would head further west, toward southeastern Louisiana.

But Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence model called it right out of the gate: the hurricane was going to hit the western Florida Panhandle.

“Google DeepMind, in particular, has really proven itself the last few years as the gold standard model,” says Michael Lowry, a longtime meteorologist and hurricane expert in Miami, who has previously advised both the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

“That model has been, by far and away, the best performing computer model that we’ve ever seen. Period.”

A different kind of model

The National Hurricane Center first started incorporating the Google DeepMind model into its official forecasts last year.

By the end of the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, it was already one of the best at predicting a storm’s path and strength, says Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher for the University of Miami.

Usually, new models take years to refine after first being introduced.

“It’s something we’re not used to – to have a model, the new kid on the block, very quickly becoming the best model out there,” McNoldy says. “This pretty much came out of the gate in first place, and that’s a pretty impressive feat.”

Traditional physics-based hurricane models use real-time atmospheric data, like temperature, humidity, pressure and wind shear, as measured by satellites and aircraft. Then they use complicated equations to predict what path a storm might travel and how strong it could get.

An AI model operates very differently: it relies more on history. It identifies patterns by analyzing thousands of past storms along with atmospheric data.

“The AI models don’t really know anything about the atmosphere other than the current picture,” Lowry says. “Beyond that, it’s not leaning on the governing equations of the atmosphere, the physics, to make predictions.”