No good news in hurricane forecast

With little more than two months before the next hurricane season, one of the most respected forecasters is sticking with his expectation that this year will continue the trend of busy hurricane seasons.

The forecaster also calls for a higher than normal probability of a major hurricane striking the U.S. coastline. This includes a nearly double chance of a storm hitting the Florida Peninsula and the U.S. East Coast.

William Gray of Colorado State University, along with his assistant, Phil Klotzbach, released their updated forecast for the coming season Tuesday.

"We continue to foresee another very active Atlantic basin tropical cyclone season in 2006. Landfall probabilities for the 2006 hurricane season are well above their long-period averages," the report stated.

While the forecast is new, the numbers are not, as the Colorado State team has seen little change in the factors that are necessary for a busy season.

"Information obtained through the end of March continues to indicate that the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season will be much more active than the average 1950-2000 season," Klotzbach said.

That translates to a forecast calling for 17 named storms, nine hurricanes and five intense hurricanes between June 1 and Nov. 31.

Lisa Berman, a Charlotte County emergency planner, said the forecast is looked at with interest because of the prominence of Gray's team and the historical accuracy of their forecasts, but little is done differently in the planning for the coming season.

"It doesn't matter how many storms are predicted. We prepare for anything that comes," Berman said.

The forecast comes on the heels of the busiest and most destructive hurricane season on record, with 27 named storms causing more than $80 billion in damages, so far.

In fact, the last two hurricane seasons have been filled with unprecedented activity and landfall.

All of this increased activity started on Aug. 13, 2004, with Hurricane Charley, a Category 4 storm with winds estimated at 150 mph.

The activity has barely let up since. Florida alone has been hit by 10 storms of varying intensity.

Klotzbach said the team bases its forecasts on a number of factors, including looking back at the past 50 years of weather, sea-surface temperatures and other items.

"Although the Atlantic is cooling slightly with respect to climatology, the water remains ominously warm," he said.

One factor that can cut off hurricanes is strong winds from an El Niño or La Niña. Currently, weak La Niña conditions are being observed, so the team expects either neutral or weak La Niña conditions to be present during the coming hurricane season.

The team found four years in which weather conditions were similar to the current condition and found that each of those years had above-normal activity.

Given the recent spate of busier-than-usual seasons, Klotzbach said the team decided to expect more storms than even those seasons.

He warned that the past two seasons were very unusual when it came to landfalling storms, but were not unexpected when upper-air steering currents were closely monitored.

"It was these favorable Atlantic steering currents that caused so many of the major hurricanes that formed to come ashore," Klotzbach said.

While the team gives a probability of 81 percent that a major hurricane with sustained winds greater than 125 mph will strike somewhere along the U.S. coastline, he said predicting steering currents is not within the capabilities of science. The annual probability of a hurricane hitting landfall in the U.S. during the past 100 years has been 52 percent.

For the Florida peninsula and the U.S. East Coast, the probability of a major landfalling hurricane is 64 percent, while the average during the past century is 31 percent.

The actual probability of a hurricane hitting landfall for any one location along the coast is very low, meaning that most U.S. coastal areas will not feel the effects of a hurricane no matter how active the individual season is.

"It is rare to have two consecutive years with such a strong simultaneous combination of high amounts of major hurricane activity together with especially favorable steering flow currents," Klotzbach said. "The historical records and the laws of statistics indicate that the probability of seeing another two consecutive hurricane seasons like 2004-2005 is very low."

He went on to say that it is statistically unlikely that the coming 2006 and 2007 hurricane seasons, or the seasons that follow, will have the number of major hurricane U.S. landfall events as we have seen in 2004 and 2005.

With the increased number of storms, many argue global warming should be blamed.

Gray disagrees.

"No credible observational evidence is available, or likely will be available in the next few decades, which will be able to directly associate global surface temperature change to changes in global hurricane frequency and intensity," Gray said.

He said the frequency of the hurricanes is part of a larger trend of multi-decadal cycles of increased activity. The current cycle began in 1995 and is expected to continue for another 10 to 25 years.

The team will be issuing seasonal updates of their 2006 hurricane forecasts on May 31, to coincide with the official start of the 2006 hurricane season; on Aug. 3, Sept. 1 and Oct. 3.

By Bob Reddy   http://www.venicegondolier.com/NewsArchive3/040506/tp1vn9.htm

Noted hurricane forecaster William Gray expects fewer twists and turns in this year's hurricane season, but still a season twice as active as average, one that could reach "Rafael."

Gray's team at Colorado State University predicts 17 named storms, including nine hurricanes -- five of them with winds of more than 110 mph. And there's a 64 percent chance one could hit somewhere from Florida to Maine this year.

"About twice an average season," said Phil Klotzbach, research associate with Gray's team. "The Atlantic is still warm, although not as warm as last year."

Hurricane season runs June 1 to Nov. 30.

Hurricane activity is driven mostly by the Atlantic Ocean's temperature, which now teeters around .5 to 1 degree above its normal range of 75 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Although cooling slightly, the Atlantic remains unusually warm, forecasters said.

Temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean continue to cool, a sign of weak or neutral La Nina conditions that could cause more hurricanes. La Nina -- the pattern of cooling in the Pacific near the equator -- usually triggers active hurricane seasons.

El Nino, the opposite pattern, typically suppresses hurricanes by creating more trade winds that shear tropical storms apart as they form. Those winds are weaker in La Nina.

Last year, 27 named storms formed, 15 of them hurricanes -- seven with sustained winds greater than 110 mph.

Storms get named when winds reach 40 mph.

Of last year's storms, only hurricanes Ophelia and Wilma brushed by Brevard County, causing scant impact other than beach erosion.

Gray's forecast is based partly on the past 52 years of global hurricane data. Between 1950 to 2000, the Atlantic basin averaged about 10 named storms, six hurricanes -- two of them intense.

Last year, things got all Greek after Hurricane Wilma, when forecasters had to dub the season's last six storms with Greek letters because the National Hurricane Center used up all 21 names on its preseason list.

"I don't think we're going to get into the Greek alphabet this year," said John Williams, a hurricane researcher at Florida Tech. "The good news is it's still 56 days before it starts."

When it does, Shakeira Tennort plans to take the warnings seriously. She and her husband, George, narrowly escaped Hurricane Katrina last year. They had just moved to Brevard from Gulfport, Miss., where much of their belongings remained in storage and luckily escaped damage.

"We were very fortunate," Shakeira Tennort said. "I don't think I would try to sit out storms because you just don't know what they are going to do."

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Prediction calls for 9 hurricanes