Thursday, August 03, 2006

The Clairvoyants Start Scrambling

The sort of reminds me of that old TV ad, with an angry mob boiling around a street corner and charging down the street, followed by a hapless politician, sweating in his three-piece suit, shouting "Wait! I am your leader!"

In any event, so far, the Atlantic hurricane season looks like it will be milder than some had foreseen, and the hurricane climatologists have to shift position, and fast:
The Colorado State University hurricane forecast is predicting that the upcoming hurricane season won't be as bad as earlier predicted.

Colorado State professor William Gray's reducing the number of likely hurricanes from nine to seven and intense hurricanes from five to three.

Gray, who's one of the nation's leading hurricane forecasters, says the fact that there have only been two hurricanes in July is not the reason for the revision.

He says Atlantic sea surface temperatures are not quite as warm and surface pressure is not quite as low. Also, the eastern equatorial Pacific has warmed some and trade winds in the tropical Atlantic are slightly stronger.

Gray and he team says hurricane activity will continue to be above average and will continue to be for another 15 to 20 years.

Thirteen major hurricanes have formed in the Atlantic Basin the past two years, seven of them striking the U.S. coast with devastating damage resulting from four of them.

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