Above average 2021 Atlantic hurricane season may keep Guard busy, threaten bases Hurricane Laura struck Louisiana in 2020 and required a large National Guard response. One of the first forecasts of the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season calls for an “above average” year, a leading tropical meteorologist said in a keynote address at Thursday’s National Tropical Weather Conference. Phil Klotzbach, who directs seasonal hurricane forecasts at Colorado State University’s Tropical Weather and Climate Research Lab, projected that the Atlantic basin will see 17 named storms in 2021, five more than the historical average of around 12 per year. A busy hurricane season could result in more activations an already-stressed National Guard, which has sustained an unprecedented workload since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — at the peak of domestic operations in June 2020, more than 120,000 Guard troops were activated either at home or abroad. The storms also could pose a threat to military installations throughout the South, such as Tyndall Air Force Base, which was devastated by Hurricane Michael in October 2018.