A noted hurricane researcher predicted Wednesday that rising water temperatures in the Atlantic will bring a "well above average" storm season this year, including four major storms.The updated forecast by William Gray's team at Colorado State University calls for 15 named storms in the Atlantic in 2008 and says there's a better than average chance that at least one major hurricane will hit the United States.
An average of 5.9 hurricanes form in the Atlantic each year.
"The Atlantic is a bit warmer than in the past couple of years," said Phil Klotzbach, a member of the forecast team. "That is something we would like to keep an eye on."
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One of the best known seasonal hurricane forecasts comes out of Colorado State University courtesy of William Gray (although Gray's student Phil Klotzbach is now lead author of the forecast).
My latest "Storm Pundit" post is up at the Daily Green.
In the post below I combined some of the Census Regions for reasons of sample size. But I decided to do this again without combining, but removing some of the questions because of small sample sizes.
The big, current, story in the Atlantic is, of course, hurrican/tropical storm (there is some confusion on the status of the storm over the last 12 hours) Ingrid. Regardless of how it is classified, Ingrid is going to cause major flooding in Mexico.
We're long overdue for a hurricane in the northeast. Last one was Bob and it was kind of a wet paper bag affair in 1991. So it's been 17 years.
I fear the next one will be quite a bit worse though. We've already had flooding due to heavy rains, something I never saw before last year.
I remember bob. It still had an organized eye, which I was in for a while.
Kerry Emanual Reconsiders Global Warming Impact on Hurricanes