A contest--your hurricane related predictions--to be posted before June 15 2009.
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With the Atlantic hurricane season drawing near, the last of a growing number of storm prognosticators, Uncle Sam, chimed in Thursday with its predictions.
Federal forecasters with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said there probably would be nine to 14 named storms this year, with four to seven becoming hurricanes.
“A near-normal season is most likely,” said Gerry Bell, NOAA’s lead seasonal forecaster.
Among the burgeoning community of hurricane season forecasters — from veterans such as William Gray and Phil Klotzbach at Colorado State University to new players like North Carolina State — there’s a general consensus that this year will bring less tropical weather than last year’s 16 named storms.
They cite various reasons, such as an expectation of more moderate sea surface temperatures in tropical areas of the Atlantic Ocean as well as the possible development of an El Niño in the Pacific, which could dampen storm formation.
“During many El Niño years, we have had significantly fewer named storms than normal,” said Chris Hebert, the lead hurricane forecaster with Houston-based ImpactWeather, a private forecasting service.
Over the last several decades an average of about 10 named storms have formed each year, but that number has risen significantly since 1995. Most forecasters attribute the rise to an upswing in a long-term, natural cycle of Atlantic temperatures called the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation.
Since 1995, 12 of the 14 Atlantic hurricane seasons have seen above-normal tropical activity.
The growth in seasonal hurricane forecasting — Gray and Klotzbach issue their first forecast for the following season immediately after the end of the last, and other groups soon follow — suggests that science is nearing the threshold of being able to make much improved forecasts, said Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at The Weather Underground Web site.
“Users of these forecasts need to keep in mind that these are very much research products and are going to be highly variable in performance,” he said. “There is the risk that spectacular failures of forecasts will turn people off to seasonal hurricane forecasting, when the long-term outlook for their success is good.”
While there may be agreement this year in the expectation of a near-normal season, there is considerable disagreement about which areas might receive the brunt of the activity and whether such a thing can even be predicted.
Hebert expects a greater number of storms than usual in the Caribbean Sea because of higher sea surface temperatures in the proximity of that body of water.
But at the same time, Joe Bastardi, senior hurricane forecaster at AccuWeather.com, says he expects the Caribbean will “be cut off from storms” in 2009.
For his part, Bell believes it’s impossible to predict where a hurricane will strike because a storm’s path is so dependent upon prevailing weather patterns in the atmosphere at that specific time.
“Those weather patterns are simply not predictable more than five to seven days in advance,” Bell said.
Just after Hurricane Ike formed last year, for example, some of the earliest computer models had the storm curving harmlessly into the Atlantic Ocean, or striking New York City.
me: 12 named storms. 8 hurricanes (Atlantic/Caribbean/Gulf Coast) 2--cat 3 or higher to hit the US mainland. 1--cat 2 makes landfall @ Lexington Ky on Aug 30 2009. just seeing if anyone reads this early in the morning
[This message has been edited by maryjane (edited 05-22-2009).]
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05:28 AM
PFF
System Bot
vinny Member
Posts: 1690 From: starkville MISSISSIPPI Registered: Mar 2003
I think we'll see 12 named storms, 5 hurricanes, 1 major. Likelihood of a US landfall is high, probably in the gulf states. We'll see a lot of tropical storms spinning up, but not gaining much momentum this year.
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12:46 PM
fierobear Member
Posts: 27106 From: Safe in the Carolinas Registered: Aug 2000
