Next year's hurricane season will be an active one, but with fewer storms making landfall than in 2005, according to researchers at Colorado State University.
In their early forecast for the 2006 hurricane season, researchers Philip Klotzbach and William Gray of Colorado State's Department of Atmospheric Science predict that next year will be busier than the average hurricane season of the past 50 years.
They forecast nine hurricanes and 17 named storms in 2006, with five of the hurricanes considered intense, meaning they will have reached Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson scale with winds of 111 mph or higher.
Additionally, the researchers predicted there will be 45 days in which a hurricane is occurring, 13 of which will involve severe hurricanes. Overall, they predicted that tropical storm activity will take place on a total of 195 days.
It is also more likely, the researchers said, that a major storm will make landfall in the United States. They predict an 81 percent chance of a storm landing somewhere on the entire U.S. coastline, well above the 52 percent average over the last century.
The researchers said there is a 64 percent chance that a major storm will hit the East Coast, including the Florida peninsula, and a 47 percent chance a storm will land on the Gulf Coast.
The Tropical Storm Risk forecast group has also warned of an active hurricane season in 2006, predicting five tropical storm landfalls in the United States, two of which they predict will reach hurricane strength.
Mr. Klotzbach acknowledged that the accuracy of the forecast remains somewhat low this far in advance of the hurricane season, saying he "wouldn't bet the farm on the numbers at this point."
The early forecast is released, he noted, in response to demand. "There's an inherent curiosity about the hurricane season," he said, adding, "People want to know."
Mr. Klotzbach said there is some degree of predictive value even this far in advance, noting that researchers can predict with 80-to-85 percent accuracy whether a season will be more or less active than the average hurricane season.
Although last year's early forecast did not accurately predict how severe the storm season for 2005 would be, Mr. Klotzbach said the department did not make any major changes to its methods.
"We looked at pretty much the same kind of information," he said, adding that any changes to the forecast resulting from the 2005 hurricane season would be reflected by the new data the researchers have compiled.
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