WeatherBug predicts above-average Atlantic hurricane season
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| Published on Friday, April 13, 2007 |
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By Victor Epstein
HOUSTON, USA (Bloomberg): WeatherBug, the owner of 8,000 weather-monitoring stations in the US, has told energy traders in Houston to prepare for an above-average number of hurricanes this year in the Atlantic Basin.
There will be 13 to 15 named tropical storms, including seven to nine that develop into hurricanes, during the June-through-November Atlantic storm season, Michael Whitehead, WeatherBug's chief meteorologist, said. He made his comments before speaking to traders at a seminar in Houston.
Three of the storms will become major hurricanes, packing winds in excess of 111 miles per hour, Whitehead said. WeatherBug is the third major forecasting group to predict above-average storm activity for the coming season, which follows a year in which no hurricanes made it into the Gulf of Mexico.
Forecasters at Colorado State University and Accuweather.com previously issued similar predictions. Whitehead said four key hurricane predictors are all indicative of greater-than-normal activity, including the absence of a protective El Nino weather pattern and the presence of above-normal temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.
"The fuel is there," said Whitehead, a former US Navy meteorologist and Mirant Corp. energy trader. "The chances of our having a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico this year, based on what we see now, are 70 percent -- the same as in 2005. The chances at the start of the season were 50 percent last year."
The Gulf was slammed with a record storm season in 2005, when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita tore through the region. Most oil and natural-gas wells were idled by those storms, which caused a record $17 billion in damage to the US energy industry and sent fuel prices to all-time highs. | | | | Reads : 196 | | | |
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