The folks at the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University have released their latest Hurricane Forecast for the Atlantic 2007 season. In it they are predicting 17 named storms with 9 becoming hurricanes. The fifty year average (1950-2000) is 9.6 and 5.9 respectively. Now I wouldn't use the numbers before satellite coverage of the entire Atlantic basin was achieved in the mid 1960's, but those number are good as a very general baseline. (You can read about my concerns on the validity of these numbers here. I will note that even in this age of saturation coverage of the Atlantic they STILL missed a storm this year in the initial reportage. They had originally said 9 tropical storms took place in the Atlantic but it has been revised to 10. So please don't carve these into marble just yet.)
I have decided that I too will be releasing a hurricane forecast this year. I will give prediction now, and a revised one right after the June 1st start of the hurricane season.
For the Atlantic basin I predict 19 named storms with 8 becoming hurricanes. Additionally, I predict 21 named storms in the Eastern Pacific with 8 of those storms becoming hurricanes.
The preceding prediction is really too specific and I would be surprised to see those number hit close to exact. Things are too variable from season to season for that level of specificity, but this is what a forecast is.
I am more interested to see how my number do in a more general sense. Combining the Eastern Pacific and Atlantic basins I am expecting 40 named storms with 16 hurricanes. I think I can hit this number pretty closely.
Only time will tell. If I am way wrong people can rip me seven ways from Sunday...but they gotta wait until next December.
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