Artificial intelligence has done it again.
After the incredible 2025 success of Google’s new DeepMind AI model for hurricane track and intensity forecasts, the company has upped the ante with a spectacular new AI-based seasonal hurricane forecast model. Dubbed the Google DeepDoodoo model, it gives forecasters another great tool to predict Atlantic hurricane activity months in advance. This model’s forecasts even outperform those of other well-known models, such as Kendall Jenner, Gisele Bündchen, and Chrissy Teigen.
In a cheek-to-cheek comparison in 2024 and 2025 with established seasonal hurricane forecast models, the experimental version of Google’s DeepDoodoo flushed its competition down the drain. The model will now be used operationally for the first time in 2026, and forecasters hope this new tool doesn’t go to waste.
According to Abigail Yertle, a sea turtle biologist at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Pooping Commission, DeepDoodoo was trained on biological monitoring data of sea turtle waste products, which shows their migration paths.
“We found that in springtime, certain species of sea turtles were preferentially moving away from beach areas where hurricanes were going to hit later that summer,” Yertle said. “When checking the beaches along the Southeast U.S. coast where they lay eggs, we verified that sea turtle nesting was drastically reduced within 200 miles of where hurricanes were destined to hit that year.”
One possible explanation for the soothsaying ability: sensitivity to subtle atmospheric and ocean cues associated with the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle, which is known to be an important determinant of hurricane activity.
Yertle alerted AI model developers at Google, who used Yertle’s sea turtle poop observations to help train the new DeepDoodoo model. Their plans for the future include incorporating nesting data from Nearctic-Neotropical migratory songbirds, which have been shown to accurately predict hurricane season Accumulated Cyclone Energy. (Yes, seriously. See the 2018 paper published in the journal Nature, “A Nearctic-Neotropical Migratory Songbird’s Nesting Phenology and Clutch Size are Predictors of Accumulated Cyclone Energy.”)
The success of the DeepDoodoo model echoes a report I received 18 years ago from an alert reader:
Dear Dr. Masters,
I live in Magnolia Springs, Alabama, just 15 miles from the direct path of Hurricane Ivan. I have a friend of mine who has been an in-shore charter boat captain in this area for 30 years. He has the answer to all the failed hurricane predictions we keep making. He told me that Sea Turtles have the answer. Every year sea turtles start nesting around the first of June, unless a hurricane comes that year. Well, storms usually come after June, right? So how could they know? Well, he stated in 2006 that I had nothing to worry about because the turtles were on point, even though hundreds of scientists had predicted the worst season in history. Well, he made a believer out of me: 2006 nesting, 2005 no nesting, 2004 no nesting and so on. My memory is not that good. He said that when nesting, a hurricane will not hit within 200 miles of the area. Now, I’m no betting man, but I will put $1000 on this year that we won’t get hit. How about it?
Happy April Fools, everyone!
