Forecasters: Florida might be in for a busy hurricane season

A busy start to this year’s hurricane season could indicate that we’re in for a stormy few months, with an increased risk of a hurricane striking Florida.

The season has produced four tropical storms so far, well above the number usually seen by this date, according to the National Hurricane Center. In an average year, it takes until Aug. 23 for the season to produce this many storms.

None of them became hurricanes. And the formation of these weather systems is such a complex business that random weather events could generate a freakishly busy start to an otherwise inactive season. But in this case, hurricane experts say, the prevailing climate conditions are favorable to storm formation and likely to remain so for the next few months.

One factor is the absence of El Nino, the warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean that suppresses hurricanes by producing high altitude winds over the Atlantic to tear up storms before they can get organized. Another is the unusually high temperature of the Atlantic, since warm water provides the energy for hurricanes.

“We have increased our forecast and now believe that 2017 will have above-average activity,” states the July forecast update of Colorado State University, one of the world’s top centers of hurricane science. “The odds of a significant El Niño in 2017 have continued to diminish, and most of the tropical and subtropical Atlantic remains anomalously warm. With the increase in our forecast, the probability for major hurricanes making landfall along the United States coastline and in the Caribbean has increased as well.”

The university’s forecast calls for eight hurricanes this year, up from six predicted in its June 1 forecast.

Philip Klotzbach, research scientist for the university’s Tropical Meteorology Project, said in an interview that conditions conducive to hurricane formation are likely to prevail through the season.

“Once you get into July and August, there’s not much that’s going to change,” he said.

Dennis Feltgen, spokesman for the National Hurricane Center, also cited the absence of El Nino in accounting for an above-average start to the season. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center will issue an updated outlook for the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season Aug. 9, he said.

The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, with the peak running from late August through mid-September.

Tropical Storm Arlene began the season unusually early, forming in the middle of the Atlantic in mid-April, then falling apart without