Next year’s hurricane season should be rather slow: only 17 named storms, including nine hurricanes, five intense, experts predicted Tuesday.
Slow, that is, compared with the tumultuous, record-shattering season that officially ended Nov. 30–yet was still rolling along with Hurricane Epsilon in the central Atlantic.
Otherwise, if this preliminary prediction by noted hurricane prognosticator William Gray holds true, 2006 would be almost twice as active as the normal season, which sees 10 named storms, including six hurricanes, two intense, with winds greater than 110 m.p.h.
The seasonal outlook calls for an 81 percent chance that at least one major hurricane will strike the U.S., considerably greater than the long-term average of 52 percent.
One bright spot: Gray and his Colorado State University forecast team don’t call for as many major hurricanes to slam the U.S. shoreline as in the past two years. “It is statistically unlikely,” he said.
Philip Klotzbach, Gray’s research associate, said the probability of landfall “along the coast is very low.”
Last December, Gray projected 2005 would see 11 named storms, including six hurricanes, three intense. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted as many as 15 named storms, including up to nine hurricanes, as many as five intense.
The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season saw a record 26 named storms, including an unprecedented 14 hurricanes, seven intense, which was about 263 percent of the average season. Epsilon, a rare December hurricane, is expected to fizzle without affecting land.
