Hurricane forecasters say this won’t be a hyperactive season in the Atlantic — unless ....

The Atlantic hurricane season is still six weeks away — even if it feels like June in the Philly region this week — but the first major outlooks are on the air and they’re saying it’s unlikely it’s going to be in a league with some of the more destructive ones of recent years.

Meteorologists at Colorado State University, a pioneer in long-term hurricane outlooks, on Thursday called for slightly below normal activity, with 13 named storms, which have winds of at least 39 mph; six of those becoming hurricanes, with winds of 74 mph or better; and two major hurricanes, with winds of 111 mph or higher.

» READ MORE: Those early season outlooks last year didn't turn out so well.

Normal values for the June 1 to Nov. 30 season are 14 storms with names, seven hurricanes, and three majors, which happened to be precisely what the Weather Company predicted in the outlook it released earlier this week.

Meteorologists for both the Weather Company and Colorado State noted the abnormal warming in the equatorial Pacific and Atlantic could affect hurricanes in opposite ways. Thus, they said, their outlooks come with more than the usual dose of uncertainties.

After three consecutive years of below-normal temperatures in the Pacific, a condition known as La Niña, water temperatures have returned to normal and are forecast to rise above average, or transition to El Niño.

El Niño tends to have a suppressing effect on Atlantic hurricanes. Its warmth perturbs the overlying atmosphere, generating upper-level winds that can shear apart incipient storms in the Atlantic Basin, which includes the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea.

» READ MORE: What La Niña can mean for hurricane season

However, as the Colorado State team noted, if El Niño fails to develop or isn’t particularly strong, “the potential exists for a busy Atlantic hurricane season.”

That’s because the sea-surface temperatures in the “east and central Atlantic are much warmer than normal.” Warm water is the lifeblood of tropical storms.

Said Colorado State’s lead forecaster Phil Klotzbach, “April forecasts always are uncertain.”

After consecutive seasons that exhausted the naming alphabet, and with the Pacific waters still quite cool, the outlooks for 2022 suggested that the Atlantic Basin was in for yet another overactive, destructive season.

As it turned out, however, hurricane activity was close to normal.

» READ MORE: Even in mid-August forecasters still were warning for shoes to drop

“The surprisingly quiet August was really the big story,” said Klotzbach. Not a single tropical storm popped up that month. He said that likely was the result of water temperature differences in the tropical and subtropical Atlantic.

Historically, the Atlantic Basin has experienced prolonged cycles of alternating active and lull tropical-storm periods lasting 25 to 40 years.

A quite active period began in 1995, and Klotzbach said it remains unclear when it might end.

“We thought that the active era may have been coming to an end after three really quiet seasons in 2013-2015, but obviously, we haven’t lacked for activity in recent years. Unfortunately, I think it’s hard to know that you’ve officially exited the active era until after you’ve had several quiet seasons in a row.”

Coastal residents and the U.S. taxpayers who help pay for the damages probably wouldn’t complain if 2023 turned out to be the start of a quiet period.