Four days into this year's hurricane season a researcher is predicting an above normal hurricane season, but cautions that forecasts giving exact numbers of storms should be dismissed.
Steve Smith, senior vice president for ReAdvisory, a service of reinsurance broker Carvill based in London, said all indicators point to an above average hurricane season for 2007. He said this year's storm pattern could resemble activity similar to 1995 through the 2004 season where there were between five and six Category 3 storms or above.
"[This] is a distinct possibility," he said in a statement.
However, he advised that precise predictions of the number of storms "should be ignored."
"Predictions of the actual number of hurricanes are lacking in skill and disregard the unpredictable nature of climate systems," he said. "Underlying climatic conditions can offer us guidance, but we should not pretend they can give us exact answers."
A report issued by Carvill's ReAdvisory said warmer than normal sea surface temperatures and the formation of a La Ni?a (the cooling of Pacific waters) would reduce windshear over the Atlantic Basin, allowing the formation of hurricanes. The Quasi-Biennial Oscillation, the formation of winds over the equator, will run easterly this year, causing hurricanes to form in the Caribbean and the Bahamas.
The eight-page report is available at www.carvill.com.
So far this year there have been two named storms, Andrea and Barry.
Andrea, a pre-season subtropical storm formed on May 9 along the Atlantic Coast of Georgia and Florida.
Tropical storm Barry formed in the Gulf off the coast of Florida on June 1. Barry moved inland over the state, through Georgia and up the East Coast. The National Weather Service said the storm reached sustained winds of close to 50 mph on Saturday.
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