Another Active Hurricane Season Forecasted

Another Active Hurricane Season Forecasted

By Daniel Hays

NU Online News Service, April 7, 3 :52 p.m. EST?Hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin will be above average this year, according to a British forecasting team.

The prediction from Tropical Storm Risk.com (TSR), based at University College London, is the second of its nature. Last Friday the meteorologists at Colorado State University's Atmospheric Science Department announced a similar conclusion.

TSR, part of the Benfield brokerage Hazard Research Centre, said there is an 80 percent probability that the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season will be above average and a 70 percent chance of an above average number of storms making landfall in the United States.

William M. Gray and Philip J. Klotzbach, the forecasters at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo., predict there will likely be 13 named storms this hurricane season, two more than they predicted in December 2004.

The Colorado team foresees three intense hurricanes. They estimate there is a 73 percent chance of at least one major hurricane making landfall on the U.S. coastline. For the East Coast, including the Florida Peninsula, there is a 53 percent chance, and from the Gulf Coast to the Florida Panhandle westward to Brownsville, Texas, a 41 percent chance.