I don’t know whether it was because of all the mortgage hype this week or because hurricane season 2007 turned out to be uneventful in the States, but the folks at Colorado State have once again hit [F9] to prod the random number generators into action, to produce an early guesstimate about storm season ‘08. Their picks:
- 13 named storms (average is 9.6)
- 7 hurricanes (average is 5.9)
- 3 intense hurricanes (average is 2.3)
- 60% chance of cat 3+ making landfall on the U.S. coast (average is 52%)
In fairness to the folks at Colorado State, they do spend a portion of their report reminding readers that there are significant uncertainties involved. Long-long-term weather forecasting is still in its infancy, and variability is huge. Gray and Klotzbach are primarily in the business of identifying correlations between weather patterns at certain times of the year with the tropical storm activity in the following year, and this report is how they opine on them.