Professor predicts active Atlantic hurricane season
MIAMI -- Like last year, the coming Atlantic hurricane season will be fiercer than normal, with a heightened probability of a major hurricane making landfall in the United States, a noted forecaster said yesterday.
After one of the most destructive hurricane seasons on record, William M. Gray, a professor at Colorado State University, said 2005 would see 13 named storms, of which seven would turn into hurricanes. He predicted three major hurricanes with winds exceeding 111 miles per hour.
The long-term average for the Atlantic basin is 9.6 named storms and 5.9 hurricanes, of which 2.3 are intense hurricanes, per season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.
''All of the information we have collected and analyzed through March indicates that the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season will be an active one," Gray said in a statement.
''We anticipate tropical cyclone activity in the Atlantic basin in 2005 will be about 135 percent of the long-term average. We also estimate the probability of US major hurricane landfall to be about 140 percent of average."
The 2004 hurricane season spawned 15 tropical storms, of which nine developed into hurricanes.
Four of those slammed into Florida in six weeks, causing total damages of about $45 billion. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew caused $25 billion in damage.
Fifty-seven people were directly killed by the storms in the United States, and another 152 died from indirect causes. In comparison, 3,000 drowned or were buried under mud after Tropical Storm Jeanne swept over Haiti.
The Caribbean suffered more than $3 billion in damages last year.
Gray and Philip J. Klotzbach, an atmospheric research scientist at Colorado State, said they might increase their predictions for the number of storms in 2005 if weather conditions continued to point to a lack of significant conditions in the Pacific for El Nino. The El Nino weather phenomenon produces a distinct warming of Pacific waters and tends to suppress storm activity in the Atlantic.
''If the next few months verify our beliefs about the lack of significant El Nino conditions, it is likely that we will be raising our forecast numbers in our coming May 31 and Aug. 5 forecast updates," Klotzbach said.
