Hurricane forecast: It’ll be busy year
University’s prediction in line with report released by AccuWeather last month
After everything that’s happened over the past year, we may feel like we deserve a quiet hurricane season.
But we’re unlikely to get one, according to a forecast released Thursday by Colorado State University.
The university, one of the centers for the study of violent tropical weather, predicted eight hurricanes this season, with an above-average chance that a major hurricane will strike the United States.
The forecast calls for a total of 17 named storms, which means tropical storms or hurricanes. An average season sees 12 named storms and 6.4 hurricanes.
“We are forecasting a well-above-average hurricane season,” said Phil Klotzbach, research scientist for Colorado State University’s Tropical Meteorology Project, in a presentation Thursday to the National Tropical Weather Conference.
Florida has a 75% chance of a hurricane coming within 50 miles, up from the seasonal average of 58%, according to the forecast. There’s a 41% chance of a major hurricane, up from the average of 28%.
“We anticipate an above-average probability for major hurricanes making landfall along the continental United States coastline and in the Caribbean,” the forecast said.
The forecast cited two major reasons to expect a busy season. This year is unlikely to experience an El Niño, the warming of part of the Pacific Ocean that produces high-level winds over the Atlantic that can tear up storm systems before they can form hurricanes.
Another factor is the expected above-average warmth of the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
“It’s not just simply because of the warmer water providing more fuel,” Klotzbach said. “It’s how it then changes the atmospheric circulation. You have lower pressures and a more unstable atmosphere, less wind shear — which all make the hurricane season likely to be more active.”
The forecast, if it turns out to be accurate, would not be as bad as last year’s record-breaking season, which generated 30 named storms, including 13 hurricanes, exhausting the list of hurricane names selected for that year.
The official start of hurricane season is June 1. But there’s discussion of moving the date into May, since there have been several pre-season storms in the past few years.
Colorado State’s forecast is in line with a prediction released last month by AccuWeather, the private forecasting service, which said to expect seven to 10 hurricane, with three to five reaching major strength.
Early season forecasts have varied in accuracy. Last year Colorado State’s April forecast called for eight hurricanes for a season that would produce 13. But the previous year, the April forecast was pretty close, predicting five hurricanes for a season that would produce six. And the year before that, the prediction called for seven hurricanes, and the season produced eight.
Forecast released closer to the season’s start date tend to be the most accurate. Colorado State and other forecasters will be releasing updated outlooks, including ones before the season’s peak begins in August.