Today, Colorado State’s University’s Tropical Meteorology Project issued its annual hurricane season forecast, which sees 12 named storms, five hurricanes, two major hurricanes, 50 named storm days, 20 hurricane days and four major hurricane days.
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A near-average hurricane season is forecast for 2016.
A major strength hurricane falls between categories 3-5 on the Saffir/Simpson scale, resulting in sustained winds of 111 miles/hour (179 km/hour) or greater. Forecasters believe that a weakening El Niño pattern is to blame for the potential increase in hurricane activity.
“Everyone should realize that it is impossible to precisely predict this season’s hurricane activity in early April”, Klotzbach said, noting the public’s curiosity for such predictions.
Of the past 16 seasonal hurricane forecasts dating back to 2000, the Colorado State team’s prediction has been accurate – within two hurricanes of what the year actually recorded – only 6 times.
Hurricane activity for 2016 is predicted to reach about 95% of the average season.
This is the 33rd year that the CSU hurricane research team has issued the Atlantic basin season hurricane forecast. La Nina is the cooling of water in the equatorial Pacific, a condition that tends to reduce wind shear where hurricanes form in the Atlantic, making it more favorable for storms.
But Klotzbach stressed at the National Hurricane Conference in March that the atmosphere doesn’t always react immediately to change, meaning an El Niño hangover might linger to help thwart storms.
The report, whose main author was noted hurricane researcher William Gray, is now mostly handled by Gray’s colleague Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist with CSU’s department of atmospheric sciences.
“It takes only one landfall event near you to make this an active season”, Klotzbach said.
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The site provides information for all coastal states as well as 11 regions and 205 individual counties along the USA coastline from Brownsville, Texas, to Eastport, Maine. Forecast numbers do not include Alex which formed in January.
