May 02, 2005
BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN
If it's late spring, it must be time to start worrying about hurricanes. And it must be time for Willie Drye, author of Storm of the Century: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, to start postulating on the doom that may or may not befall us this summer.
Willie reports that there may be a new way to measure what the back half of a hurricane season might be like:
Researchers at England's University College London have devised a computer model that uses data from midsummer winds to predict the likelihood of hurricanes striking the United States later in the season.The model was created by scientists at the college's Benfield Hazard Research Centre. The center is sponsored by Benfield, a London-based reinsurance company that is one of the world's largest.
The new model could get a real workout right from the start. Forecasters think a ten-year trend of active hurricane seasons will continue this summer.
William Gray, a pioneer in long-range hurricane forecasting who is based at Colorado State University, thinks seven hurricanes will form in the Atlantic Basin this year. (The region includes the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.) The professor of atmospheric science predicts that three of those storms will be major ones, with winds exceeding 111 miles an hour (179 kilometers an hour).
Gray believes there's a better-than-even chance that one of those intense hurricanes will make landfall somewhere on the U.S. east coast.
Oh great. Time to buy a generator.
Posted by Jeff at May 2, 2005 08:03 AM | TrackBack