Hurricane director says season likely to be above normal

The National Hurricane Center director said last week that the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season will likely be above normal, but he added “there are a lot of things that could happen in the atmosphere that could have a bearing on the season.”

Bill Proenza said atmospheric conditions are shaping up to indicate that this year’s season will be more active than last year.

Last year, an El Nino pattern undermined the development of tropical systems and the Gulf Coast and Atlantic Seaboard had a much-needed respite from devastating hurricanes.

El Nino is a periodic warming of tropical Pacific waters that can affect weather around the world.

But it looks like this year will be busier because the El Nino pattern has diminished and steering currents appear to be shifting in a way that would lead tropical systems toward land rather than back out to the ocean, Proenza said.

It appears that “we tend to go back to an above normal season” this year, in line with a theory that the Atlantic is in a decades-long active period that started in 1995, he said.

Proenza’s comments at the National Hurricane Conference came a day after William Gray, a top hurricane researcher at Colorado State University, predicted a “very active” season Tuesday with at least nine hurricanes and a good chance one will hit the U.S. coast.

Gray predicts 17 named storms this year, five of them major hurricanes. The probability of a major storm making landfall on the U.S. coast this year is 74 percent, compared with the average of 52 percent over the past century, he said.

The National Hurricane Center will release its forecast in late May. Hurricane season begins June 1 and lasts for six months.

INFOBOX

2007 Hurricane Names

The National Hurricane Center began naming storms in 1953. The first year men’s names appeared in the list was 1979. Today, the list alternates between male and female names.

Hurricanes are named alphabetically in chronological order. However, the list excludes names that begin with a “Q” or “U.”

Andrea

Barry

Chantal

Dean

Erin

Felix

Gabrielle

Humberto

Ingrid

Jerry

Karen

Lorenzo

Melissa

Noel

Olga

Pablo

Rebekah

Sebastien

Tanya

Van

Wendy