Hurricane Forecast: Worse Than First Predicted

The most prominent independent hurricane forecaster in the United States is predicting an Atlantic hurricane season "well-above average" – a significant increase from a prediction just four months ago.

The prediction from Philip J. Klotzbach and William Gray's team at Colorado State University's Tropical Meteorology Project predicts 15 named storms, eight of them hurricanes, with half of those hurricanes reaching "major" strength of Category 3 or above.

That prediction would produce hurricane activity well above the 50-year average of 9.6 named storms, 5.9 hurricanes and 2.3 major hurricanes. The overall cyclone activity, defined as a combination of factors such as duration of days with storm activity and intensity of the storms that form, is predicted to be 160% of average.

Further, the chance of a hurricane making landfall in the U.S. is predicted to be much higher than average probability:

1. Entire U.S. coastline - 69% (average for last century is 52%)

2. U.S. East Coast Including Peninsula Florida - 45% (average for last century is 31%)

3. Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle westward to Brownsville - 44% (average for last century is 30%)

4. Above-average major hurricane landfall risk in the Caribbean

"Current conditions in the Atlantic basin are quite favorable for an active hurricane season," the authors of the report write. "Both of our early April predictors call for a very active hurricane season in 2008. The current sea surface temperature pattern in the Atlantic is a pattern typically observed before very active seasons. Waters off the coast of Iberia as well as the eastern tropical Atlantic are very warm right now (Figure 6). The Azores High has also been quite weak during the month of March. Typically, a weakened Azores High leads to weaker trade winds that enhance warm SST anomalies due to reduced levels of evaporation, mixing and upwelling in the eastern tropical Atlantic."