Another hurricane forecaster has chimed in, and again the spring forecast calls for a busier-than-usual storm season in the Atlantic basin.
This prediction is from the forecasting team of Phil Klotzbach and William Gray at Colorado State University. They don't see a lot of hurricanes in Colorado, but Gray has been making predictions and getting attention for them for 27 years.
Their April prognostication calls for 15 named storms in the season that opens June 1 and closes Dec. 1. That's better than 50 percent higher than the long-term average of 9.6 names storms per season.
Of those named storms, Klotzbach and Gray expect eight to develop into hurricanes (the average is 5.9), while four would reach "major" Category 3 status, with top winds of 111 mph or more. (The average is 2.3 major storms per season.)
The Colorado State forecast is more conservative than the one issued last month by AccuWeather's Joe Bastardi, who predicted 16 to 18 named storms this season.
But both camps base their forecasts on the same factors: a waning El Nino event in the tropical Pacific and and unusually warm sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic. The warm Atlantic waters provide fuel for the birth and growth of big storms. El Nino's influence produces "shear" winds in the Atlantic that tend to cut off storm development, so a weakening El Nino would remove those curbs.
Last year's hurricane season, under the restricting influence of a growing El Nino event, triggered just nine named storms, and only three hurricanes. Forecasters repeatedly revised and downsized their predictions last year as the season played out and the El Nino strengthened.
This season, Klotzbach and Gray say based on developing conditions and 58 years of historical data, that the risk of a major (Cat. 3) storm making landfall along the U.S. coastline is 69 percent, compared with an average of 52 percent in the 20th century.
As for the risk of a major storm making landfall along the East Coast, the Colorado State team put the chances at 45 percent, compared with a long-term average of 31 percent.
"While patterns may change before the start of the hurricane season," Gray said, "we believe current conditions warrant concern for an above-average season."
The federal forecasters at NOAA will release their forecasts in May.
(SUN PHOTOS/Top: David Hobby/Bottom: Karl Merton Ferron/ Tropical Storm Isabel, 2003)