Straight from the meteorologists’ website:
Information obtained through November 2008 indicates that the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season will be somewhat more active than the average 1950-2000 season. We estimate that 2009 will have about 7 hurricanes (average is 5.9), 14 named storms (average is 9.6), 70 named storm days (average is 49.1), 30 hurricane days (average is 24.5), 3 intense (Category 3-4-5) hurricanes (average is 2.3) and 7 intense hurricane days (average is 5.0). The probability of U.S. major hurricane landfall is estimated to be about 120 percent of the long-period average. We expect Atlantic basin Net Tropical Cyclone (NTC) activity in 2009 to be about 135 percent of the long-term average.
As much as I joke about forecasts such as this as being “random number generators”, I should give the folks credit for doing as good a job as they do. For example, consider their forecast validation for 2008:
The problem is more with users of forecasts such as these drawing too much meaning from them. An above-average year of 14 storms will still be a boring year if all 14 are fish storms in the mid-Atlantic. However, a quiet year with only a single storm would be devastating if that one storm were large and made landfall at the wrong spot. (A cat 3 storm for New York City, anybody?)
