I know; I really shouldn’t be so irreverent as to refer to seasonal hurricane forecasts as “random number generators”. However, given the wide range of variability that exists with the forecasts and their accuracy, I can’t resist.
Seen in Insurance Journal:
The final months of the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season are expected to experience above-average activity, forecasters at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, Colo., are predicting.
According to its latest forecast, the two-month period of October-November is expected to experience a total of four named storms. The CSU team had predicted five named storms with their earlier October-November predictions, but they downgraded the forecast slightly to four named storms with two becoming hurricanes with their latest update.
The article points to the emergence of a La Niña pattern as suppressing wind shear, making it easier for tropical weather systems in the Atlantic to hold together and blossom into storms.
I’ll still keep my fingers crossed that it remains a relatively quiet year on the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coasts, however.