Hurricane Season '06

[El and Bill]

In the news this morning, and of specific interest for those on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts:

The Colorado State University team led by Dr. William Gray, a pioneer in forecasting storm probabilities, said it expected 17 named storms to form in the Atlantic basin during the six-month season starting in June.

Nine of the storms will likely strengthen into hurricanes, with winds of at least 74 mph, the team said, reaffirming their early prediction in December.

The forecasters said five of the hurricanes were likely to be major storms, reaching at least Category 3 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, and boasting winds of at least 111 mph.

The long-term statistical average is for around 10 named storms per season, of which six become hurricanes.

[MOOSE]

I've followed this guy's predictions for a number of years; he's pretty close to right on. He says we've been lulled into a false sense of security over the last 40 years or so by fewer than normal hurricanes and has predicted this return to more and more severe activity. Unfortunately, that 40 years has seen one heck of a lot of development along our storm prone coasts.
Al

[nscogin]

Does he make any prediction as to where the hurricanes are likely to make landfall? As someone whose waterfront vacation home was completed less than a year ago, I have more to worry about than just my boat!

Norma

[Captains Cat]

[Papillon]

I can pretty much tell you where one of those baby's is going to be in mid to late July. I am planning a short (1 Week) circle of SW Florida, heading up the coast to Ft. Myers and across the big ditch to the East Coast and down to the Keys, and back up the 10,000 islands to Naples.

You can bet your bottom dollar that one of the nine will catch up with me some time that week. I got my degree in " Murphy's Law" .

[Yellowstone]

Sorry to hear about this prediction. Hurricanes are really bad news. After my first wife died of complications due to diabetes, I married a Mississippi lass who lived on the gulf coast near Bay St. Louis. We decided to put all her household effects into dry storage since we didn't need two homes and two households. We picked Kiln, Mississipi as the site, thirteen miles from the ocean. Well, Katrina came along and pushed water up the Jordan River to the extent that the original 30 foot sea surge put only four feet of water into our storage unit. You can imagine the mess we found three weeks later. Interestingly enough, a number of small boats survived Katrina with minimal damage, while homes miles from the ocean were completely destroyed. Nature is a cruel master! John